[Guide] Start / Stop and get state of a Service on your Pi with a ShellSwitch

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Hi Guys,

here my little Guide / Scripts for start / stop and get the state of a service on your PI with a ShellSwitch.

Whats the Problem?
My problem wars that i use Z-Way on my Pi with Pimatic and today a waked up and my Zwave Motionsensor didnt work, so i checked pimatic and there it wars 6k Errors because Pimatic checks every second the state of my Montionsensor.

Solution:
A ShellSwitch that know the state of the service and can it start over a pimatic rule / manuell if its needed.

Scripts:
Important the “state-script” will also shown “false” if you enter a misspelled service name or not existing service name

The Scripts works all like this:

in Pimatic:

#Scriptpath Servicename

/home/pi/pimatic-scripts/service_start.sh z-way-server

in the console:

#Scriptpath Servicename

./service_start.sh z-way-server

The Script checks that you have entered a service name, if you not you will see this message in the pimatic errorlog:

error [pimatic-shell-execute]: [ShellPresenceSensor#test] Error: unknown state="no service name entered, check your device in Pimatic"!

“service_start.sh”

#!/bin/bash

service=$1

if [ -z "$service" ]
then
        echo "no service name entered, check your device in Pimatic"
else
        sudo service $service start
fi

“service_stop.sh”

#!/bin/bash

service=$1

if [ -z "$service" ]
then
        echo "no service name entered, check your device in Pimatic"
else
        sudo service $service stop
fi

“service_state.sh”

#!/bin/bash

service=$1

if [ -z "$service" ]
then
        echo "no service name entered, check your device in Pimatic"
else
        if state=$(pgrep $service) > 0
        then
                echo "true"
        else
                echo "false"
        fi
fi

(this guide is only for Users that have Pimatic running with the User “Pi” because you need a User with “sudo” permissions, if you have this different you may have to make more permission work first)

1. Create the 3 SH-files in your folder “/home/pi”, i recommend also to create a Subfolder for this scripts
2. Set permissions on the files every file need the permission that owner can run it (i do this over the GUI, if you have a console only pi you have to do this via comandline)
3. Get the service name type the command in your console on your Raspberry to get a List of your services:

service --status-all

4. Create a new “ShellSwich” (here example with “z-way-server”-service)

    {
      "onCommand": "/home/pi/pimatic-scripts/service_start.sh z-way-server",
      "offCommand": "/home/pi/pimatic-scripts/service_stop.sh z-way-server",
      "getStateCommand": "/home/pi/pimatic-scripts/service_state.sh z-way-server",
      "interval": 60,
      "id": "YOURID",
      "name": "YOURNAME",
      "class": "ShellSwitch"
    }

You can use as Interval what you want but i recommend that you not set it to low because its not necessary!

That´s it, the Switch will have automatically the state of the service and you can also start or stop the service by switching the Switch and you can setup rules that you get a Telegram Message if the service is stopped and start the service again.

very nice! thx for this nice howto!

@tehmilcho nice script and in-depth tutorial. However i would advice to use 1 script. Ive written something fast which is easier tonuse i think, change however you want

#!/bin/bash

service=$1
status=`sudo service $1 status | grep Active`

case "$2" in
         start)
             echo "Starting $1..."
             sudo service $service start
            ;;
        stop)
             echo "Stopping $1..."
             sudo service $service stop
            ;;
        status)
            echo $status
            ;;
        *)
            echo $"Please enter a service and/or action!"
            exit 1

esac

A quick how-to; $1 means the first command line parameter after script.sh and $2 is the second one.

So now you could simply use:
./yourscript.sh pimatic start
Where pimatic = $1, and action(in case tag) is $2.

Screenshot of usage:

mmhh okay… anyway … I read but the “$1” but … in the moment i made it … it wars new for me so i dont think about to use a second for the methode

It wars my frist try with BASH … so be nice to me

@tehmilcho i am also no bash expert, i just wanted to learn you something. Having 1 script instead of 3 is in my eyes better so i wanted to explain that to you. By al means dont be offended, that wasnt my intention

Yep sure