3 tries 3 fails Raspberry b+

Alvinger

Hi all,
I’m running my mirror on an original Pi B 256MB with no issues at all!

The Raspbian version I use is DietPi which is really great on a 256MB Pi. Note that the standard user in DietPi is “root” rather than “pi”. If you use standard Raspbian just replace all occurences of “root” with “pi” in the scripts below.

As the documentation states you start off with installing the Server Only option. If I remember correctly I had to manually install many of the node module dependencies as they weren’t installed correctly otherwise

I use matchbox as the window manager because it suited my needs best. It uses less resources which again is great for a 256MB Pi.

I’m using systemd scripts rather than pm2 as I think they work better. My scripts:

magicmirror.service:

[Unit]
Description=Node.js Magic Mirror Server

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /root/MagicMirror/serveronly/index.js
WorkingDirectory=/root/MagicMirror
Restart=always
RestartSec=20
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=nodejs-magicmirror
Environment=NODE_ENV=production PORT=1337

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

matchbox.service:

[Unit]
Description=X11
After=X.service

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0
ExecStart=/usr/bin/matchbox-window-manager -use_titlebar no -use_cursor no
User=root
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Kioskbrowser.service:

[Unit]
Description=Kiosk Browser
After=matchbox.service magicmirror.service
Requires=magicmirror.service

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/root/MagicMirror
User=root

Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0

# Don't activate screensaver
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/xset s off

# Disable DPMS (Energy Star) features
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/xset -dpms

# Don't blank the video device
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/xset s noblank

ExecStart=/root/kioskbrowser http://localhost
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note that the kioskbrowser service relies on a user script called /root/kioskbrowser. This script has some extra logic to avoid the initial white screen when midori has loaded but not fetched any magic mirror content. The script perform a curl call to see if the magic mirror module is responding. If not it waits for a few seconds and then tries again. Once the magic mirror responds it starts midori in fullscreen mode.

/root/kioskbrowser:

#!/bin/bash
status=1
url="$1"
wait="10s"
tries=0

# URL must be first argument
if [ -z "$url" ]; then
  exit 1
fi

# Make sure that the url is reachable
while [ $status -ne 0 ]; do
  let tries++
  curl --fail --progress-bar -o /dev/null --url "$url"
  status=$?
  if (($tries > 10)); then
    wait="30s"
  fi
  if (($tries > 20)); then
  wait="5m"
  fi
  if (($tries > 30)); then
  echo "$0: Can't load URL $url"
    exit 2
  fi
  sleep "$wait"
done

# Start browser in fullscreen mode
/usr/bin/midori -e Fullscreen -a "$url"

Hope this helps.

infamoustiggr

Hi Alvinger,
That sounds exactly what I need thanks, with the only problem being that, being a complete learner, I don’t know what to do with it…

Do I need to put the scripts into a particular file or just write them into the command line itself?

On the whole I’ve managed most projects independently thanks to the mighty google and suitable search terms, got my media centre and a pi in my van as a music/film hub, but this is the first thing that’s been a bit more complicated and I’ve failed miserably to this point…

I’ve been trying to learn this sort of thing for years and just never seem to have the time. I’m a physio by trade, so I don’t even have something close to this as my day job.

Thanks for your patience!

Nick

Alvinger

@infamoustiggr,

Installed packages
If you are running dietpi or Raspbian Jessie systemd should already be installed. Otherwise you need to install and enable it. Google is your friend.

Midori should also be installed but Matchbox most likely isn’t. Install it with:

sudo apt-get install matchbox-window-manager

Systemd
The systemd scripts are all located in /etc/systemd/system. To create magicmirror.service enter the following command (I’m using the editor nano):

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/magicmirror.service

Paste script from above and edit to suit your needs.

Make the script executable with the following command:

sudo chmod +x /etc/systemd/system/magicmirror.service

Repeat these steps for the other scripts by replacing magicmirror.service with the appropriate name.

Custom script
For DietPi the scripts are located in /root and for Raspbian they are located in /home/pi. Change to the appropriate directory with cd.

nano kioskbrowser

Paste the code from above and save/exit
Make the script executable by running:

chmod +x kioskbrowser

MagicMirror config
Make sure that MagicMirror has the correct port set in config.js. (Look for “port”: in config/config.js and make sure it is set to 80. Otherwise modify kioskbrowser.service and change the url http://localhost to http://localhost:port where port is the port number of MagicMirror.)

Scheduled on/off times
If you’re like me and do not want your mirror active during the night you can either use a module such as MMM-ModuleScheduler or a cron script that turns the monitor power on/off at set times. I use the latter. To do that you enter the command:

crontab -e

and paste the following lines

59 05 * * *     /usr/bin/vcgencmd display_power 1
09 23 * * *     /usr/bin/vcgencmd display_power 0

Exit and save.
The first line turns the monitor ON at 05:59 and the second line turns if OFF at 23:09. Modify according to needs.

Reboot your pi and enjoy!

infamoustiggr

That is honestly amazing that you would take the time. Thanks!

Alvinger

@infamoustiggr, thanks!
Just make sure sure to pay it forward if you have the opportuniy to help someone else here in the forums.

infamoustiggr

@Alvinger Really sorry! I’ve swapped to dietpi on fresh install and then follows your fine instructions a few times, clean install x3 at least, but keep getting same error:

Xinit: giving up
Xinit: unable to connect to X server: connection refused
Xinit: server error

Then it dumps me to the command line…

Any idea how I’ve screwed up your fine instructions?

Ta!
Nick

johnnyboy

This post is deleted!

Alvinger

@johnnyboy
Of course you could always buy a Pi 3 and not worry, but what’s the fun in that? It’s much more rewarding to make it run on a Pi 1! :-)

@infamoustiggr
The first rule of troubleshopting is to eliminate all things that ARE working! What’s left must be the error.

I would start with running all commands from the shell, i.e. do not create the systemd scripts, rather run the respective commands from the shell bybtyping them in, that way you will get feedback from each command.

The error messages you post do not have any context so it’s hard to know when they occur. From where did you cut the errors?

When installing raspbian or dietpi you should NOT install X or any desktop environment, the relevant packages will be installed when you install the other components.

johnnyboy

This post is deleted!

Alvinger

@johnnyboy
That’s technology development for you. Of course, in this case @infamoustiggr has the luxury of having someone with the exact same equipment already having the solution running.

As to the speed issue, apart from taking a few extra seconds on boot, I have no issues whatsoever with speed for functionality on my Pi 1. But I must admit it took me a number of tries to get there! Doing it with little to no experience with Linux is really tough.