Don't restart an APP when appdaemon looses connection to Home Assistant

schford · August 10, 2018, 3:58am

Hi guys,

Can anyone help. I have appdaemon running as a docker on unraid - that connects to Home Assistant running on a different docker again on unraid.

I have an app that runs - that is basically a python script that doesnt connect to home assistant at all - it connects to my alarm system and translates the output of that into my MQTT server (again on a different docker on unraid).

The trouble is when I restart Home Assistant - appdaemon restarts my alarm app and this causes it to die and stop writing the output to mqtt and the only way I can fix it is to restart appdaemon itself - I currently have an automation in Home Assistant to restart the appdaemon docker after it restarts.

Is there any thing I can do in config or else where to tell app daemon not to restart this app when it reconnects to Home Assistant.

Current apps.yaml is

alarm:
module: comfort2a
class: Alarm

Cheers

STuart

Odianosen25 · August 10, 2018, 5:21am

Should be

alarm:
module: comfort2a
class: Alarm
plugin: NONE

Regards

ReneTode · August 10, 2018, 8:58am

like @Odianosen25 points out you can prevent it from restarting.
but there is also another thing you can do.

you say your app dies and AD needs restarting.
in most cases that is because some processes cant handle a new start before the active one is stopped.
you can create an terminal(self) function. that will run as soon as the app get stopped (or reinitialised)

Odianosen25 · August 10, 2018, 9:43am

Thanks for that @ReneTode, for the life of me I keep forgetting terminate() exists

schford · August 10, 2018, 6:30pm

This sounds interesting - I am off to google how to do this any pointers?

Thanks guys!

schford · August 10, 2018, 6:46pm

I made the change to this and indeed it does not try and restart the app, however the act of trying to reconnect to Home Assistant seems to cause the app to stop functioning. Am I missing something - does it shut down the apps if it loses a connection.

This is incredibly infuriating!!

Cheers for any help

Stuart

Odianosen25 · August 10, 2018, 7:15pm

It depends on what your app does, as I don’t know what u doing in your code, hard to tell.

I haven’t had to use my system without having the Hass Plugin in it, and as long as u have that in, it might not function since HA is not connected.

Regards

ReneTode · August 10, 2018, 11:52pm

normally when something goes wrong and an app stops working there is an error in the errorlog.
you say that your app only connects to your alarmsystem and translates that to mqtt.

how does it send that to mqtt? does it use HA for that?
how is HA installed? does a restart also influence your mqtt?
does a restart from HA maybe influence the state from your alarmsystem?

what exactly is hanging?

i guess that i like @Odianosen25 cant tell much without you sharing more info. (errors, code, how you have tried debugging, etc.)

schford · August 11, 2018, 12:22am

Thanks for your help guys - this is the app I use

github.com

koochyrat/comfort2/blob/master/comfort2.py

# Copyright(c) 2018 Khor Chin Heong ([email protected])
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#        http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

import select
import socket
import time
import datetime
import threading
from datetime import timedelta

This file has been truncated. show original

What I discovered was that if I logged onto the App Daemon docker terminal and ran the python script manually and restarted HASS then I had the same issue - given that it is essentially a stand alone app, I have switched over to running it on the Home Assistant Docker using an automation to start it when Home Assistant starts.

Touch wood this seems to be working at the mo!

Stuart

ReneTode · August 11, 2018, 12:42am

i am sorry to say but this is no app at all.
i dont even see how it would get started.

you dont import anything from AD, and there is no class that AD can connect to.

its not an standalone app, its just a python script that has no relation to AD.

obviously it also will never generate any error or logging in the AD logs, because there is no relation.

i hope for you that your solution keeps working.

for your information:
any app that has something to do with appdaemon has at least these line:

import appdaemon.plugins.hass.hassapi as hass #or any other plugin (in the moment only MQTT is available through 3th parties)
class the_classname_mentioned in_apps_yaml(hass.Hass): # connected to the plugin

    def initialize(self):
        #some stuff related to AD

if those lines arnt there it cant be called an appdaemon app.

Odianosen25 · August 11, 2018, 7:26am

Hello @schford,

As @ReneTode said that is definitely not an app. I do think I understand what you are trying to do, and I had similar use of it sometime back. But what you will have to do is thus:

Run this python script standalone in your box. You said you use docker, so might have to figure out how to do it.

You can use one of the mqtt AppD plugin to subscribe to the topics for the alarm and do your automation based on that.

I am presently trying to work on a TCP Server/Client plugin for AppD, as the one in HA is so limiting. With that, it will be possible to completely run this script you have within AppD (with some modification of course ).

Sorry we can’t give much more, but this should help with some pointers.

Regards