Playing a video on Raspberry Pi OS startup - linux

I need to run a script to play a video when I turn on my Raspberry Pi 4. I'm using crontab to run my script which opens a video with mpv.
When I run the script normally, it works fine and the video is being played.
The problem is, when i boot the raspberry, the script automatically runs but mpv doesn't .
here is my script:
#!/bin/bash
VIDEOPATH="/home/pi/Desktop/my-movie.mkv"
SERVICE="mpv"
while true; do
echo "playing "+$VIDEOPATH
$SERVICE --fs --start=00:00:00 $VIDEOPATH
done
I added this line to crontab:
#reboot /home/pi/Desktop/my-script.sh
I'm totally stuck in this. Any help saves my life!

The most practical solution I found to run GUI programs on startup is using Autostart.
I created a .desktop file at /etc/xdg/autostart directory:
sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/display.desktop
when display would be a custom name for my script.
I added following lines the display.desktop :
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Play a video
Exec=mpv --fs --start=00:00:00 path-to-my-video
Saved the file and reboot the Pi.
sudo reboot
As soon as my Pi boots up, my GUI program automatically start as well.

Please update your script:
#!/bin/bash
source ~/.bash_profile
VIDEOPATH="/home/pi/Desktop/my-movie.mkv"
SERVICE="mpv"
while true; do
echo "playing "+$VIDEOPATH
$SERVICE --fs --start=00:00:00 $VIDEOPATH
done

Related

Is there a way to make crontab run a gnu screen session?

I have a discord bot running on a raspberry pi that i need to restart every day, I'm trying to do this through crontab but with no luck.
It manages to kill the active screen processes but never starts an instance, not that I can see with "screen -ls" and I can tell that it doesn't create one that I can't see as the bot itself does not come online.
Here is the script:
#!/bin/bash
sudo pkill screen
sleep 2
screen -dmS discordBot
sleep 2
screen -S "discordBot" -X stuff "node discordBot/NEWNEWNEWN\n"
Here is also the crontab:
0 0 * * * /bin/bash /home/admin/discordBot/script.sh
Is it possible to have crontab run a screen session? And if so how?
Previously I tried putting the screen command stright into cron but now I have it in a bash script instead.
If I run the script in the terminal it works perfectly, it’s just cron where it fails. Also replacing "screen" with the full path "/usr/bin/screen" does not change anything.
So the best way of doing it, without investigating the underlying problem would be to create a systemd service and putting a restart command into cron.
 
/etc/systemd/system/mydiscordbot.service:
[Unit]
Description=A very simple discord bot
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=node /path/to/my/discordBot.js
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Now you can run your bot with systemctl start mydiscordbot and can view your logs with journalctl --follow -u mydiscord bot
Now you only need to put
45 2 * * * systemctl restart discordbot
into root's crontab and you should be good to go.
You probably should also write the logs into a logfile, maybe /var/log/mydiscordbot.log, but how and if you do that is up to you.
OLD/WRONG ANSWER:
cron is run with a minimal environment, and depending on your os, /usr/bin/ is probably not in the $PATH var. screen is mostlikely located at /usr/bin/screen, so cron can't run it because it can't find the screen binary. try replacing screen in your script with /usr/bin/screen
But the other question here is: Why does your discord bot need to be restarted every day. I run multiple bots with 100k+ users, and they don't need to be restarted at all. Maybe you should open a new question with the error and some code snippets.
I don't know what os your rpi is running, but I had a similar issue earlier today trying to get vms on a server to launch a terminal and run a python script with crontab. I found a very easily solution to automatically restart it on crashes, and to run something simply in the background. Don't rely on crontab or an init service. If your rpi as an x server running, or anything that can be launched on session start, there is a simple shell solution. Make a bash script like
while :; do
/my/script/to/keep/running/here -foo -bar -baz >> /var/log/myscriptlog 2>&1
done
and then you would start it on .xprofile or some similar startup operation like
/path/to/launcher.sh &
to have it run the background. It will restart automatically everytime it closes if started in something like .xprofile, .xinitrc, or anything ran at startup.
Then maybe make a cronjob to restart the raspberry pi or whatever system is running the script but this script wil restart the service whenever it's closed anyway. Maybe you can put that cronjob on a script but I don't think it would launch the GUI.
Some other things you can do to launch a GUI terminal in my research with cronjob that you can try, though they didn't work for my situation on these custom linux vms, and that I read was a security risk to do this from a cronjob, is you can specify the display.
* * * * * DISPLAY=:0 /your/gui/stuff/here
but you would would need to make sure the user has the right permissions and it's considered an unsafe hack to even do this as far as I have read.
for my issue, I had to launch a terminal that stayed open, and then changed to the directory of a python script and ran the script, so that the local files in directory would be called in the python script. here is a rough example of the "launcher.sh" I called from the startup method this strange linux distro used lol.
#!/bin/sh
while :; do
/usr/bin/urxvt -e /bin/bash -c "cd /path/to/project && python loader.py"
done
Also check this source for process management
https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ProcessManagement

Minecraft Linux Server | Start.sh problem

I have a Minecraft Server running on Linux.
I use to start the server, a start.sh file with following content:
(This content starts a screen session and the minecraft server)
screen -S {ScreenSession} java -Xmx2G -Xms2G -jar spigot-1.18.1.jar
If I use /restart ingame, the screen session will end and the server won't start. So I have to go into the Linux Server and start the Minecraft Server again.
My question:
How can I make it so, if I use /restart that the server will restart with a active screen session.
If have tried many things.
I hope someone can help me,
~Kitty Cat Craft
There is multiple way to achieve what you want.
If you have lot of servers, you can use a quick bash script with an auto restart like that:
#!/bin/sh
while true
do
java -Xmx2G -Xms2G -jar spigot-1.18.1.jar --nogui
sleep 5
done
When you will stop, it will wait 5 seconds then restart.
With this, you can use: screen -dmS <screenName> sh myScript.sh which will run the script into another screen. It's usefull when you run it from a script which run lot of server, like that:
screen -dmS srv1 sh srv1.sh
screen -dmS srv2 sh srv2.sh
screen -dmS srv3 sh srv3.sh
You can also, if you have only one server, just firstly use screen -S screenName. Then, when you are in the screen, run the script that restart automatically (the script that I gave at first).
Also, prefer use /stop than /restart, because spigot will try to find the script. And if it success, it will run a second time the same script, and so will have ghost process.

No cursor motion capability occurs when startup linux script execute minicom script with at commands

I have created a startup Linux script for a board that runs Debian jessie Armbian 8.1. I need at startup to run at command in a modem attached to it via USB interface. I've put the script inside rc.local:
#!/bin/sh -e
cd /home/user/Script/
sh script.sh
exit 0
In the folder Script I have a script:
#!/bin/sh
minicom -S at_command.txt
The at_command contains:
send at+creg=1
send exit
! killall minicom
The issue is that when I run the script manually it works correctly,
however when I start the the board the at commands do not execute.
Since the board is Debian I also followed the link: ttp://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2012/06/raspberry-pi-run-program-at-start-up.html and to adapt the script to run according LSBInitScripts but I got the same behavior. When running sudo /etc/init.d/myScript start manually everything works great, but after Linux startup no at_command is executed. I added in the rc.local the following commands for debugging:
set -x;
exec 2>>/home/user/Script/minicom-rc.log;
date +"$0 %c" >&2
And in the generated log file I got this printout:
+ date +/etc/rc.local %c
/etc/rc.local Fri 02 Mar 2018 04:02:43 PM EET
+ cd /home/user/Script/
+ sh script.sh
No cursor motion capability (cm)
What I have done wrong?
I am guessing it is related to there being no terminal during startup.
Maybe try adding the following line before starting minicom:
export TERM=linux-c-nc
In this scenario you alternatively use my atinout program which is a program specifically made for sending AT commands to a modem from the command line (assuming the modem is /dev/ttyUSB0):
echo at+creg=1 | atinout - /dev/ttyUSB0 -
or possibly
atinout /home/user/at_commands.txt /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/null

Bash Simulate User input for terminal gui program

I have been trying to automate the setup process for pi hole on a raspberry pi. I am relatively new to bash and am unable to figure out how to automate the setup process once the terminal gui for the program begins.
this is what I have so far
#!/bin/bash
pihole -r
echo "waited"
$SHELL
So I reiterate back to my question, how do I automate the task of choosing and entering the option in the terminal gui of the pihole program? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
There's already a script that should be able to do it for you ("Pi-hole Automated Install")
To execute it you'd do:
curl -L install.pi-hole.net | bash
unfortunately it's too big to post here, so you'll want to grab it
here:
↳ Github : Pi-hole Automated Install

Raspbian (jessie) open new terminal window

I'm pretty new to Linux / Raspberry PI.
I want to run a command from a shell script in a new shell window since commands like "cvlc music.mp3" (VLC PLAYER) would block the shell until playback has beenn finished.
Therefore it would be nice to export the playback command to another shell
Is this correct?
gnome-terminal && lxterminal don't seem to be an option for the distribution
for testing purpose I created two dumnmy shell-scripts:
[start.sh]
#!/bin/sh
lxterminal\
--title="MyScriptWindow" \
-e "bash -c ./exe.sh;bash"\
[exe.sh]
#!/bin/sh
echo "Hello World"
[output]
root#raspberrypi:/home/pi# ./start.sh
(lxterminal:1315): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
If I've understood correctly, you are doing all this only because you want the shell to be released at the execution of your cvlc.
You only need to detach it from shell standard output and run it as a background process
nohup cvlc music.mp3 &
is this enought ?
You could also run the program in background
$> ./test.sh &
Or use screen
Using these command you wont block your shell.

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