Installing AppDaemon on Ubuntu with virtualenv

Odianosen25 · December 11, 2017, 6:56am

sorry don’t worry it was a silly mistake. I had installed using the homeassistant user as said, and I was using the wrong user in the service file. Changed that and I am up and running .

Will still leave this in here though, in case someone else makes the mistake.

Kind regards

anderson110 · December 23, 2017, 8:44pm

Can a virtualenv created for home assistant also be used for appdaemon? Or do you need to create a separate virtualenv, user, group, etc?

aimc · December 23, 2017, 9:56pm

They should be able to coexist, I’m not aware of any conflicts.

gpbenton · December 24, 2017, 6:52am

I am doing this now. If there are any conflicts in the future (for instance, if I don’t want to upgrade one or the other) I will create a new virtualenv for appdaemon.

ReneTode · December 24, 2017, 12:00pm

i always upgrade both when i like, and never had any conflicts.

JuliusLedoux · April 6, 2018, 5:40am

Thank your for this I am using it and it worked for me Appdaemon 3.0.0. I had a real mess due to python 3.4 and Debian stretch…
Thanks!!

Phill_Healey · January 7, 2020, 9:52pm

Thanks @cgtobi for the guide, however I’m hitting at problem. When I get to sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/[email protected] I get asked for the appdaemon user password which I dont have. So, I back out to the default pi user account and continue from there.

However, when I try run sudo systemctl systemctl restart [email protected] it fails with the following output:

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/[email protected] → /etc/systemd/system/[email protected].
Failed to start [email protected]: Unit [email protected] not found.

Any ideas what I’m doing wrong? My guess is that I need to enter a different service, although I’m just guessing. I’m running Home Assistant in a venv if that makes any difference?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Phill_Healey · January 8, 2020, 8:24pm

I’m running homeassistant on a rPi in a virtual python environment. I followed this guide on how to get appdaemon setup but am unsure of where to go from here.

I have an appdaemon app that I’d like to get running with HA: Monitor App. Despite looking I’ve not been able to find any info on where exactly I should place app files inorder to use them, other than mention that it should be in a folder named apps.

I can see a ‘appdaemon’ folder located at ‘/srv/appdaemon/’ and I’ve manually created a sub folder within it named ‘apps’. Then I’ve created and added files ‘apps.yaml’ and ‘home_presence_app.py’ corresponding to the files in the Monitor App linked to above.

After restarting appdaemon and HA I’m not seeing any of the sensors that I was expecting the app to create. Nor, am I seeing any other signs of appdaemon apps running.

I can only assume that I’m looking in the wrong place and am now totally lost.

Any help on working this out would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

ReneTode · January 8, 2020, 8:48pm

appdaemon expects a configuration folder.

that can be everywhere you like, as long as the filerights are right.

the configuration folder from appdaemon (lets call it config) must contain at least these 2 elements:

appdaemon.yaml (the configuration file)
a folder called apps containing all apps

if you want to run AD in a venv then normally you need to do these steps:

make a new dir that contains the venv (not the config)
create the venv (python3 -m venv /the/dir/you/created )
activate the venv (source /the/dir/you/created/bin/activate )
pip install appdaemon

then you can start appdaemon manually like:
appdaemon -c /the/config/dir/you/created/

or you can create a service which also points to that config dir.

the docs for appdaemon can be found here:
https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

edit:
i should have read the (old) first post before reacting, because its all explained there (including the appdaemon config and where to put the apps files

allthough this way of installing is also telling how to create a user called appdaemon, which isnt really neccesary.

Phill_Healey · January 8, 2020, 9:00pm

Thanks for the response. I setup appdaemon exactly as described at the top of this thread.

Now, I see that I need to activate the venv for appdaemon and then go to ~/.appdaemon where I can now see conf and apps folders. I think I’m in the right place now.

Thanks.

ReneTode · January 8, 2020, 9:52pm

dont forget that now that you have created appdaemon with a user called appdaemon, you will always need to create and edit files when you are logged on as the user appdaemon.

when you create/copy/edit files as the user pi, homeassistant or root, appdaemon will not be able to read the files!

Phill_Healey · January 8, 2020, 10:00pm

I just realised that. Good point!

Is there a way to see if an appdaemon app is actually running?

Thanks again.

ReneTode · January 8, 2020, 10:05pm

you will always see everything that appdaemon does it its logs.
if you dont know where to look in system logs then set actual files in appdaemon.yaml (again make sure that appdaemon can write there)

https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/CONFIGURE.html

an example from appdaemon.yaml

secrets: /some/path
log:
  accessfile: /export/hass/appdaemon_test/logs/access.log
  errorfile: /export/hass/appdaemon_test/logs/error.log
  logfile: /export/hass/appdaemon_test/logs/appdaemon.log
  log_generations: 3
  log_size: 1000000
appdaemon:
  threads: 10
  plugins:
    HASS:
      type: hass
      ha_url: <some_url>
      token: <token>
      # cert_path: <path/to/root/CA/cert>
      # cert_verify: True
      namespace: default

cgtobi · January 9, 2020, 5:10am

Depending on how you’ve set up home assistant your systemd script might go by a different name or you don’t use one at all. Just comment the line After: ... and try again.

cgtobi · January 9, 2020, 5:14am

You have to change user and activate the venv:

$ sudo su -s /bin/bash appdaemon 
$ source /srv/appdaemon/bin/activate
$ cd ~/. appdaemon

cgtobi · January 9, 2020, 5:17am

To view the logs run sudo journalctl -f -u [email protected] as your administrative pi user.

Phill_Healey · January 9, 2020, 9:40am

All i see is the following:

appDaemon: Unexpected error refreshing default state - retrying in 10 minutes
Jan 09 09:12:40 HA-SERVER appdaemon[28169]: 2020-01-09 09:12:40.891678 WARNING A                                                                             ppDaemon: Unexpected error refreshing default state - retrying in 10 minutes
Jan 09 09:12:41 HA-SERVER appdaemon[28169]: 2020-01-09 09:12:41.935917 WARNING A                                                                             ppDaemon: Unexpected error refreshing default state - retrying in 10 minutes
Jan 09 09:12:42 HA-SERVER appdaemon[28169]: 2020-01-09 09:12:42.974844 WARNING A                                                                             ppDaemon: Unexpected error refreshing default state - retrying in 10 minutes
Jan 09 09:12:44 HA-SERVER appdaemon[28169]: 2020-01-09 09:12:44.014636 WARNING A                                                                             ppDaemon: Unexpected error refreshing default state - retrying in 10 minutes
Jan 09 10:12:51 HA-SERVER appdaemon[28169]: 2020-01-09 10:12:51.204275 WARNING A                                                                             ppDaemon: Excessive time spent in utility loop: 1385.0ms

Any ideas what this means?

ReneTode · January 9, 2020, 11:46am

thats no normal appdaemon logging, but it shows that AD is in an errorstate.

i suggest that you set actual logs, so you know how to find it.

Phill_Healey · January 9, 2020, 1:13pm

Sorry, but I don’t get what you mean…

cgtobi · January 9, 2020, 1:20pm

Not sure what your systemd script looks like but it should be similar to this:

/etc/systemd/system/[email protected]

[Unit]
Description=AppDaemon

[Service]
Type=simple
User=%i
ExecStart=/srv/appdaemon/bin/appdaemon -c "/home/%i/.appdaemon/conf/"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target