hb-service support for FreeBSD

[ohmantics]

Following up to the offer in issue 784, this patch is the start of FreeBSD support for hb-service.

There's a lot of features in here to get working and a few aren't complete, but now seemed like a good starting point for discussion and feedback and work can continue in this PR.

• The use of daemon sets up logging a bit differently than expected.
• sudo should probably default to true.
• shutdown doesn't work in a jail, so another solution is needed. (There's a TODO comment for this.)
• I didn't actually get Avahi working, although it should be possible.
• Restart from the UI just does a kill for now.
• hb-service update-node just displays a message for now.

The rc service script is based on work by Stefan Bethke, who responded that the blog post from which it came is CC0.

[oznu]

Merging into freebsd branch

[oznu]

The use of daemon sets up logging a bit differently than expected.

Using hb-service run... sorted this.

sudo should probably default to true.

Done

shutdown doesn't work in a jail, so another solution is needed. (There's a TODO comment for this.)

Removed it, we don't need to offer this function. It's no longer enabled for new debian-based linux installs.

I didn't actually get Avahi working, although it should be possible.

Maybe we should remove the option for now then. I install avahi and dbus, I can see they are running, but Homebridge still won't use it with the avahi option.

Restart from the UI just does a kill for now.

This is the correct behaviour, I adjusted the rc file to restart Homebridge automatically after it dies. The stop command still works as expected.

hb-service update-node just displays a message for now.

That's fine, I don't see official binaries for FreeBSD anyway.

[oznu]

See changes in https://github.com/oznu/homebridge-config-ui-x/tree/freebsd

Available for testing in @test

https://github.com/oznu/homebridge-config-ui-x/wiki/How-To-Test-Upcoming-Changes

[oznu]

However, the homebridgeBinary path is coming up null, despite homebridge being installed with -g --unsafe-perm. run doesn't work any better for me.

Using the version currently in test, I did the following:

• Installed FreeBSD 13.1 using standard options
• Installed these packages: node16 npm gcc python3 sudo
• Ran npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge homebridge-config-ui-x@test
• Executed hb-service install --user homebridge

That seems to get everything working as expected.

[ohmantics]

However, the homebridgeBinary path is coming up null, despite homebridge being installed with -g --unsafe-perm. run doesn't work any better for me.

Using the version currently in test, I did the following:

• Installed FreeBSD 13.1 using standard options
• Installed these packages: node16 npm gcc python3 sudo
• Ran npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge homebridge-config-ui-x@test
• Executed hb-service install --user homebridge

That seems to get everything working as expected.

Indeed, a fresh install this way does. Something must be different about how I was doing dev.

Only nit that sticks out now is that the system-info-widget shows the OS as unknown.

[oznu]

Only nit that sticks out now is that the system-info-widget shows the OS as unknown.

It seems to be picking it up here.

[oznu]

IP address info is missing

[oznu]

IP address info is missing

Fixed that, for some reason that I am sure will come back to bite me, I had an exception to not load this on FreeBSD, it seems to work fine now though.

[oznu]

Tested again in a TrueNAS Jail (FreeBSD 13.1) - seems to work as expected.

[ohmantics]

Only nit that sticks out now is that the system-info-widget shows the OS as unknown.

It seems to be picking it up here.

systeminformation figures out the platform here. Unfortunately, my install is aarch64 (arm64) and it seems that machdep.bootmethod is only registered on i386/amd64 variants. Reported upstream here.

[oznu]

So my stance on FreeBSD support. While I'm happy to have this included, I won't be promoting its use as an officially supported platform. This is mainly because I can't automatically test it using GitHub actions (and I don't want to use the VM inside an action method). It will stay in the "Other Platforms" section of the Homebridge wiki.

[emaste]

I can't automatically test it using GitHub actions

There are a couple of work-in-progress approaches for adding FreeBSD support to GitHub actions (not using the VM route) so hopefully this will be possible in the future.