How I got my Magic Mirror working on a Raspberry Pi 0 (zero)

Burner911

@Kobie @Wieber Good news! Found out my mail module wasn’t connecting properly with my 2-step verification enabled. After switching to a “less secure app password” my mail app loaded correctly and no longer continued to stall and chew up resources in the background. As a result I was able to remotely connect once again and the scheduler works!

SebTota

I followed all your steps… took me 4 tries to actually succeed (my very first Pi project ever)… but i get an error. It boots into MagicMirror2 but it says "please create a config file. See README for more information. " I went on GitHub and read the README file but no matter what i type in i cant find the config file. Please help me out. Huge thanks!!!

Wieber

@SebTota Your MM2 is actually working, so you did not mess up :D
You just have to configure your MM in order to boot it properly. If you go to the /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample file you can add all the information your mirror needs (e.g. a link to a weather api, an RSS feed for news etc) you can safe the file with ‘crtl+x’, then change the file name to config.js (just remove the ‘.sample’ bit) and press ‘y’ (this is of the top of my head, but i’m sure you can figure it out, you just have to safe the file under a different file) and reboot!

You don’t actually have to put in your personal edits (weather, calendar etc) for it to boot normally, it just needs an ‘config.js’ file for it to stop showing the message.

Good luck!

Wieber

@Burner911 Great to hear it’s all working now :D

SebTota

What the heck!! I got the error message. Reset the pi. Got the message again. Gave up, then when i saw you comment I said id give it another try. I boot it up and it works. I dont know if you have some magical powers your not telling anyone about, but man I love you right now.

Wieber

@SebTota I might have received a letter from Hogwarts once, but I would have to kill you if I told you ;)
Have fun with your mirror!

SebTota

@Wieber Not to bother you much more but i still have one more question. When i try to access the MM like you said to change the config file i get an error.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample
-bash: /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample: No such file or directory

any idea?

Wieber

@SebTota Uuhm, can’t check right now, but if I recall correctly the directory is /home/MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample . It’s probably due to an error I made somewhere along the line (not installing in the preferred directory)

SebTota

@Wieber I have a feeling that there was a problem installing MagicMirror because my SSH disconnected but I just continued through the steps. Do you think it would help to just run the command again to install the program or is there a way to update it and it would find if there are any files missing?

Wieber

@SebTota Well I think there isn’t really anything wrong with your Mirror, since it shows the default page for when the Config.js is missing.
What you could do is search for the ‘config.js.sample’ file with the following command:
find -name “config.js.sample”
I haven’t used this command myself, but more info on it is found here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-find-and-locate-to-search-for-files-on-a-linux-vps

Edit: a loss in SSH connection doesn’t necessarily means that your Pi messed anything up, just like your PC can still run when your monitor disconnects. Although a connection loss could have a lot of reasons that would also mess up the Pi ofc ;)

SebTota

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SebTota

Alright after some time I figured it out.

cd MagicMirror
cd config
sudo nano config.js
then the file should open.

This is for the noobs like me who might need that.

bhepler

@SebTota What @Wieber has forgotten to mention is that the config.js.sample file is the default configuration that is included with the mirror software. The mirror software itself is looking for config.js. So the step that is missing is to copy the sample to the end file name. Once you have it copied over, this will become the file that you use to change your mirror’s behavior.

You copy the file with this command: cp ~/MagicMirror/config/config.js.sample ~/MagicMirror/config/config.js

You can then edit the config.js command as you have already discovered: nano ~/MagicMirror/config/config.js Nano is the editor, config.js is the file you are editing.

piziie

Great guide!

I have a quick question though. When my pi zero boots, it boots into a command line where i can see the modules are loading. It ends with

Ready to go! Please point your browser to: http://localhost:8080
Whoops! There was an uncaught exception...
{ [Error: listen EADDRINUSE :::8080]
  code: 'EADDRINUSE',
  errno: 'EADDRINUSE',
  syscall: 'listen',
  address: '::',
  port: 8080 }

any ideas what causes this and how it can be fixed?

SebTota

@piziie I believe my pi had the same response but after a few seconds it boots into the browser and shoes the mirror and works fine. Is it the same with you?

piziie

@SebTota
unfortunately no, it remains on the terminal. When i open a browser and go to localhost:8080 it does appear to be working so i know the MM and modules load correctly.

It seems to be an issue with the midori start script?

/home/pi/startMidori.sh

#!/bin/sh
xset -dpms # disable DPMS (Energy Star) features.
xset s off # disable screen saver
xset s noblank # don’t blank the video device
matchbox-window-manager &
unclutter &
midori -e Fullscreen -a http://localhost:8080

My /home/pi/start.sh script:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/MagicMirror
node serveronly &
sleep 45
sudo xinit /home/pi/startMidori.sh

and the last line in .bashrc

/home/pi/start.sh

another side note- on boot i get this error:

(EE) 
Fatal server error:
(EE) Server is already active for display 0
        If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
        and start again.
(EE) 
(EE) 
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support 
         at http://wiki.x.org
 for help. 
(EE) 
Starting MagicMirror: v2.1.0
Loading config ...
Loading module helpers ...
No helper found for module: alert.
Initializing new module helper ...
No helper found for module: clock.
XIO:  fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0"
      after 6 requests (6 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

could this be the source of the error?

bhepler

@piziie In my experience, this means that the mirror process is already running and you’ve attempted to start it again. Are you using PM2 to manage the mirror process? Is it possible that two of your scripts are both trying to start the mirror? Have you changed any init settings to auto-boot the mirror?