Starting MM Crontab

mumblebaj

Hi.

I have been using crontab to start my MM for ages and it has always worked well. After updating it no longer seems to work. cron calls a script that has the following.

cd ~/MagicMirror
DISPLAY=0 npm start

Now, I have seen that it is suggest to use node --run start:X11 going forward and I have updated my start script with same but that does not seem to work either.

So my mm.sh now looks like,

cd ~/MagicMirror
DISPLAY=0 node --run start:X11

But as mentioned, this does not work.

Any ideas?

KristjanESPERANTO

@mumblebaj said in Starting MM Crontab:

DISPLAY=0 node --run start:X11

It should be start:x11 and not start:X11.

Are you still using X11?

Does it run when you start it manually?

Can you provide the logs from the startup?

mumblebaj

@KristjanESPERANTO Sorry, typo, it is lower x. It start when I manually run npm start. When I manually run node --run start:x11 it works fine. When I manually run the script ./mm.sh it works fine. When calling it from the cron nothing. In my log I see the command node --run start:x11 but MM does not launch.

sdetweil

@mumblebaj is the cron jon in the user crontab (contrab -e) ? or root (sudo crontab -e) ?

if root, the pm2 job doesn’t exist there, it opnly exists under user who created the pm2 job

mumblebaj

@sdetweil in my user, crontab -e. It worked just fine until I updated my mirror this morning. I don’t use pm2 on my installation for my own reasons… 😉

sdetweil

@mumblebaj said in Starting MM Crontab:

It worked just fine until I updated my mirror this morning.

only MM update?

note that we changed the startup strings.

“start”: “node --run start:x11”,

mumblebaj

@sdetweil Yep, only MM update. Let me try start: node --run start:x11 and see what happens.

KristjanESPERANTO

@mumblebaj Just an idea: Maybe the node version used in Cron could be to old. When you run a script manually in your terminal, your full user environment (including things like .bashrc or .zshrc) is loaded. Cron runs in a much more minimal environment — it often doesn’t load your shell config files, so tools like nvm (Node Version Manager) might not be available.

How to fix it:

Use the full path to Node: Find it with which node and use that path in your cron job.
Set the environment manually in cron: You can define your PATH at the top of the cron file.
Source nvm in your script: If you use nvm, add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh and nvm use <version> before calling node.

mumblebaj

@KristjanESPERANTO Thanks Kristjan. But I don’t see how updating MM could cause this. I only updated MM with Sam’s upgrade script. Don’t see how that has changed anything with regards to how Crontab works. Maybe it is related to changing the launch to node --run start. I can see the command being fired in the log but it does not launch MM like it did before the upgrade.

Anyhow, I manually launch it for now till I find a suitable solution.

sdetweil

@mumblebaj did you use npm start before?

it ‘may’ be the path as @KristjanESPERANTO mentioned

so from the user command line do

which node

and use that result in the cron command

mumblebaj

@sdetweil Hi Sam. I have always used npm. I have just been reading through the PR-3764 and i agree with your arguments in that it could have breaking affects for how we do things as both users and devs. Case in point.

However, the forum is about new things and moving forward, so I agree with @KristjanESPERANTO on that point of view as well.

I have now resolved my script issue and am now able to launch from the cron again. 😉

For somebody who may have the same issue, this is how I solved for it.

export DISPLAY=:0
cd ~/MagicMirror
npm run start:x11

The above has solved it for me now.

mumblebaj

@sdetweil Stupid question, how do I mark this as resolved?

sdetweil

@mumblebaj you didn’t open it as an issue, so it can’t be resolved

Normally 3 dot menu right of selected post

sdetweil

@mumblebaj what do you think fixed your problem?

DISPLAY is set in package.json if not already
folder of course

mumblebaj

@sdetweil A few things:

The main issue being:
MagicMirror is now using a flat npm config, and the start scripts are handled differently, node --run start:x11 is not a valid Node.js command — unless you are using a custom wrapper or an internal script, this will fail silently or do nothing.

As Crontab runs in a minimal environment, so any graphical (X11) application must explicitly export DISPLAY. Previously I had the command as DISPLAY=:0 npm start. Now, I had to export DISPLAY=:0 first and then start MM.