Node-redd addon not starting - but log seems to show all is well? - Solved: PEBKAC

EDIT: Solved. As so often the case, this was typical ID10T error. I was under the impression that restarting Homeassistant from the Settings menu was performing a reboot on the Raspberry Pi that everything is running on. That is however not correct, so through all my restarts, uninstalls and re-installs, I never actually rebooted the host machine. A simple reboot command through the Terminal add-on caused all the described problems to disappear.
Not a complete loss though, as I did learn a lot in the process of tracking down this non-existant problem.

So after running into problems with node-red as described here: Accidentally broke a working Node-Red/HA setup. Maybe by deleting "server"?, I decided to roll back to a backup from last week and re-install.

Running Hass OS on a Raspberry Pi, latest versions for everything.

I enter the necessary bits in the config tab for the node-red addon, turning ssl off, and hit start.
After a while, the log looks ok (see below), but when I try the node-red companion, it tells me that node-red ins’r running and that I need to start it. In the info tab of the add-on UI, I still only see the “start” and “uninstall” buttons, not the usual “Restart” and “open UI” buttons. Hitting the start button again does nothing. No change in status and nothing added to the log either.

I have rebooted HA multiple times as well as uninstalled and re-installed the add-on, to no avail.

Any ideas what might be wrong here?

Here’s the log, as taken from the add-on UI. The repeated connection attempts to supervisor do look a bit suspicious, but there’s no error in there, or anything that tells me what’s wrong:

Edit: not sure if this is relevant, but the Settings file mentioned in the log, at /etc/node-red/config.js doesn’t seem to exist. In fact there is no /etc/node-red directory at all.

28 Sep 20:57:21 - [info] 
Welcome to Node-RED
===================
28 Sep 20:57:21 - [info] Node-RED version: v3.0.2
28 Sep 20:57:21 - [info] Node.js  version: v16.16.0
28 Sep 20:57:21 - [info] Linux 5.15.61-v8 arm64 LE
28 Sep 20:57:25 - [info] Loading palette nodes
28 Sep 20:57:37 - [info] Dashboard version 3.2.0 started at /endpoint/ui
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Settings file  : /etc/node-red/config.js
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Context store  : 'default' [module=memory]
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] User directory : /config/node-red/
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [warn] Projects disabled : editorTheme.projects.enabled=false
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Flows file     : /config/node-red/flows.json
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [warn] Encrypted credentials not found
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Server now running at http://127.0.0.1:46836/
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Starting flows
28 Sep 20:57:41 - [info] Started flows
[20:57:41] INFO: Starting NGinx...
28 Sep 20:57:46 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 20:57:47 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connected to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:08 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connection closed to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:13 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:18 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:23 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:28 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:33 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:38 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:43 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:48 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:53 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:00:58 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:05 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:11 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:16 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:22 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:29 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:35 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:40 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:45 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:01:47 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connected to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:09 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connection closed to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:14 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:19 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:24 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:29 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:34 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:39 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:44 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:49 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:11:55 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:00 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:05 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:10 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:15 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:22 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:30 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:35 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:40 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:12:44 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connected to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:06 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connection closed to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:11 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:16 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:21 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:26 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:31 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:36 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:42 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:47 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:52 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:17:57 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:02 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:07 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:12 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:18 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:24 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:29 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:35 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
28 Sep 21:18:38 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connected to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:36:38 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connection closed to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:36:43 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:36:48 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:36:53 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:36:58 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:03 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:08 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:13 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:18 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:23 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:28 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:34 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:39 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:44 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:51 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:37:59 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:38:08 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:38:13 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connecting to http://supervisor/core
29 Sep 06:38:14 - [info] [server:Home Assistant] Connected to http://supervisor/core

Ok, update, but no progress yet.

I have restored from a previous backup and re-installed everything, while carefully watching the various logs. The only thing I noticed is that when I re-click the “START” button in the Info tab of the add-on UI, I get this in the supervisor log:

22-09-29 13:43:45 WARNING (MainThread) [supervisor.addons.addon] a0d7b954_nodered is already running!

Seems like it is running, but for some reason, neither the HA UI, nor the NR companion can see it.

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I have the same issue now! Did you fix this?

Yes. Check the edit in the first post. I was an idiot and didn’t realize that restarting home assistant doesn’t restart the device it’s running on (in my case a raspberry pi). So I had been restarting home assistant again and again, but I never rebooted the Pi. Once I understood that and sent a reboot command to the Pi, it came back up with everything running just fine.

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