Trying to get started AD up and running

Third party integrations AppDaemon
1

Trying to get AD running for the first time and keep getting a Unicode error when running the “sudo appdaemon -c /home/homeassistant/conf”

Hoping to get:

2016-08-22 10:08:16,575 INFO Got initial state
2016-08-22 10:08:16,576 INFO Loading Module: /home/homeassistant/conf/apps/hello.py
2016-08-22 10:08:16,578 INFO Loading Object hello_world using class HelloWorld from module hello
2016-08-22 10:08:16,580 INFO Hello from AppDaemon
2016-08-22 10:08:16,584 INFO You are now ready to run Apps!

Instead I get:

pi@HomeAssistant:~ $ sudo appdaemon -c /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/conf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/local/bin/appdaemon”, line 11, in
sys.exit(main())
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/admain.py”, line 335, in main
admain.main()
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/admain.py”, line 331, in main
self.run(appdaemon, hadashboard)
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/admain.py”, line 58, in run
self.AD = ad.AppDaemon(self.logger, self.error, loop, **appdaemon)
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/appdaemon.py”, line 214, in init
self.app_config = self.read_config()
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/appdaemon.py”, line 1324, in read_config
config = self.read_config_file(os.path.join(root, file))
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/appdaemon/appdaemon.py”, line 1352, in read_config_file
config_file_contents = yamlfd.read()
File “/usr/lib/python3.5/codecs.py”, line 321, in decode
(result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xb0 in position 37: invalid start byte

Any ideas? Help would be appreciated

2

appdaemon 3.0.0b4
hassbian 64.3

3

Running AD with sudo does not seem like a good idea, why are you doing that?

4

If I run without sudo I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/local/bin/appdaemon”, line 11, in
sys.exit(main())
File “/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/appdaemon/admain.py”, line 365, in main
admain.main()
File “/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/appdaemon/admain.py”, line 279, in main
fh = RotatingFileHandler(logfile, maxBytes=log_size, backupCount=log_generations)
File “/usr/lib/python3.5/logging/handlers.py”, line 150, in init
BaseRotatingHandler.init(self, filename, mode, encoding, delay)
File “/usr/lib/python3.5/logging/handlers.py”, line 57, in init
logging.FileHandler.init(self, filename, mode, encoding, delay)
File “/usr/lib/python3.5/logging/init.py”, line 1009, in init
StreamHandler.init(self, self._open())
File “/usr/lib/python3.5/logging/init.py”, line 1038, in _open
return open(self.baseFilename, self.mode, encoding=self.encoding)
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/conf/logfile.log’

5

so it seems that the user that runs appdaemon doesnt have writing access to your conf directory.
that user needs to have full access to the complete directory and all its subdirectories.

6

Thanks, apart from the permissions issue, what do you think explains the Unicode error when running as Sudo?

7

That could be explained by a non-ascii character in the config file, such as an accented character. IF that is the case, sometimes surrounding the whole string in quotes can help.

8

besides that a readable yaml can have trouble with strings with characters like é ö ä, etc (in that case its mostly the pythoncode that has trouble with it)
also characters like é ö ä, etc are not always saved the right way by different fileeditors, leaving you with an invalid or unreadable yaml.

i try to avoid such characters in the yaml, but if you cant then make sure you use an editor that can work with them.

9

So I have done new install of Hassbian and just wanted to confirm the best install method

  1. Hassbian script process
  2. pip 3 install process.

There does not seem to be a Hassbian/Appdaemon config install process documented anywhere.

10

hasbian is a “normal” linux environment, so a normal pip3 install will be fine.
to make yourself secure you can create a venv for appdaemon to install it in.

11

Thanks Rene