Can anyone help me with a startup issue? Everything was working fine, I did some editing in my sensors.yaml and now HA won’t start up and doesn’t produce a error log either. This is the first time this ever happened to me and I’m a bit freaked out.
systemctl status shows the following:
● home-assistant.service - Home Assistant
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/home-assistant.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2016-10-17 23:52:26 EDT; 20s ago
Process: 2278 ExecStart=/srv/hass/hass_venv/bin/hass -c /home/hass/ (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 2278 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: self.update(index+1)
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: File "/srv/hass/hass_venv/lib/python3.4/site-packages/yaml/reader.py", line 153, in update
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: self.update_raw()
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: File "/srv/hass/hass_venv/lib/python3.4/site-packages/yaml/reader.py", line 178, in update_raw
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: data = self.stream.read(size)
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: File "/srv/hass/hass_venv/lib/python3.4/codecs.py", line 313, in decode
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
Oct 17 23:52:25 raspi1 hass[2278]: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 179: invalid start byte
Oct 17 23:52:26 raspi1 systemd1: home-assistant.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 17 23:52:26 raspi1 systemd1: Unit home-assistant.service entered failed state.
Commenting out the edits in the sensors.yaml file had no effect. I checked every other YAML file and they all look like valid text files, so I am thinking that somehow one of the core file got mangled but I can’t tell which one from the error.
The only other time I had HASS not start and also not producing errors in the Hass log was when I had deleted my full .homeassistant directory and just restored my backup. I made a write up on how I got it back working (see below).
I would suggest to make a full backup of everything under .homeassistant and then deleting everything in that directory on your Pi. If you then restart HASS, it pulls all the needed files from the web and should start up (of course empty because there are not yaml’s in there) . At least you will know if it is hass ore something else that is messed up. If it comes up, then start copying back your yamls (see post for some tips)
There’s probably something wrong with your config, some special character or something like that.
It seems it is not utf-8 encoded.
Probably a name for an entity - try to remove all non-ascii characters from the config.
You can also try to convert the file:
Sebastian gave me the clue here - I was trying to make an average temperature sensor using a value template using the example shown in this post:
I copied the example and I believer it was the degree symbol in the unit of measurement that threw things off. Wow that was scary! It was the sensors.yaml file but the error doesn’t reference the file with the special character or the line in that file so I was without a clue.
I think HA should have identified the proper file, so I’m going to put in an issue for this so it gets caught properly.
This is the longest I’ve been down and it was pretty weird having to give up at 1:00 AM knowing the HA wouldn’t be running in the morning.
Thanks @sebk-666 for the solution as well as the iconv info - didn’t know about that. @ReneTode and @Tyfoon - thanks so much for your help and support!
Agreed and I had a backup, but it wasn’t recent enough. Just did a new one.
Here’s the reason I raised the bug issue though; besides not raising a proper error and creating a log, I had commented out the new section with the sensor completely as part of my initial trouble shooting.
HA shouldn’t have even read the section with the error…
i had that trouble when i started using HA.
i didnt use a right editor and got TABS where they shouldnt be.
no real error to fall back on. but because i knew it after a short while i always checked my last changes on strange characters.
if HA doesnt start after an yaml edit, i am always sure it is a character problem.
For the record: Voluptuous, despite the name, is a Python data validation library. It is primarily intended for validating data coming into Python as JSON, YAML, etc.
It has three goals:
Simplicity.
Support for complex data structures.
Provide useful error messages.
That explains a lot; yesterday I made a rest sensor with a template and Hass would not restart. I commented out the sensor and still it would not restart. I then removed it completely to work on it in a separate notepad. Hass restarted fine again. Never made this link. Notepad actually puts the # one space before the actually text (instead of the first character on the line). Does this cause these issues?
Not sure about this. I use the ConText editor for everything including YAML files. Never had a problem with it until this.
For the record, I’m still unsure of how to put the degree symbol in so HA will accept it, but without it HA is loading fine and the sensors work great.
