Pimatic not running as 'service'
Well, after the success yesterday, the story continues 
This evening I got the whole setup running.
For the books 
:
Let’s see now, how stable this runs …
Thanks again for the support here 
I actually have the same issue. Although somewhat different environment. Pi3b, Buster, Everything installed “the Pimatic way” (Node 10.16.3).
I had to reinstall a few weeks ago because of Z-Way acting up (still not fully resolved, by the way). I went with the Node10 setup after MySensors finally went with the newer version of serialport.
I have been running it manually for a month (not much reason for automatic starting because of it running well). So I wanted to install globally because of a lot of mandatory restarts trying to troubleshoot my RazBerry.
The NPM link produced a lot of warnings and a NPM audit fix recommendation.
In my instance;
the process isn’t dead.
/usr/local/bin/pimatic.js exists.
after stopping the process and manually running /pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/pimatic.js it fails
the log displays:
13:09:14.099 [pimatic] Starting pimatic version 0.9.54
13:09:14.105 [pimatic] Node.js version 10.16.3
13:09:14.107 [pimatic] OpenSSL version 1.1.1c
13:09:14.284 [pimatic] Startup error: Error: Parse error on line 1:
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]>
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]>^
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]>Expecting 'STRING', 'NUMBER', 'NULL', 'TRUE', 'FALSE', '{', '[', got 'EOF'
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Parser.parseError (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/node_modules/yet-another-jsonlint/lib/jsonlint.js:150:15)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Parser.parse (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/node_modules/yet-another-jsonlint/lib/jsonlint.js:215:22)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Object.exports.parse (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/node_modules/yet-another-jsonlint/lib/jsonlint.js:665:51)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Framework._loadConfig (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/lib/framework.coffee:145:27)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at new Framework (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/lib/framework.coffee:63:8)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at /home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/startup.coffee:95:17
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at tryCatcher (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/node_modules/bluebird/js/release/util.js:16:23)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Function.Promise.attempt.Promise.try (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/node_modules/bluebird/js/release/method.js:39:29)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Object.startup (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/startup.coffee:94:10)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at run (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/pimatic.js:17:24)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Object.<anonymous> (/home/pi/pimatic-app/node_modules/pimatic/pimatic.js:22:3)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:778:30)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:789:10)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:653:32)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:593:12)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:585:3)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:831:12)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at startup (internal/bootstrap/node.js:283:19)
13:09:14.284 [pimatic]> at bootstrapNodeJSCore (internal/bootstrap/node.js:622:3)
13:09:14.287 [pimatic] exiting...
I did not run the NPN audit fix because of the experience the OP had.
This is kind of discouraging. I really like the look of pimatic and I do not have the patience to start all over with another piece of software.
I hope this will help solve the issue with the NPM link. I will reinstall Pimatic and alter the autostart script as mentioned a few posts above.
Hi, looks like your config.json file is corrupt.
If you reinstall pimatic and follow the autorun instructions, you can ignore the warnings.
If afterwards ‘sudo service pimatic start’ works, its ok (assuming the config.json is ok).
If that doesn’t work, the alternative is NOT to make Pimatic globally available and follow the instructions above
If my config.json would be corrupt it would have been caused by the NPM link action. it has been running for over a month. I ran the NPM link, tried to restart, and it failed. I just now ran the NPM unlink so and hat the same error.
I will check my config first. Was just about to remove Pimatic and start over.
Edit: I don’t know why, but the config.json is empty! So someone needs to take a look at the link script!
Yes. I had tinkered a lot since, better aligning device names and ID’s. That is lost. But im already running now.
Thanks for the hint. Saved me a full re-install including some docker stuff I really was looking up against.
Next: slap some sense in Z-way-server and get it to work for longer than 2 weeks. Otherwise i’ll pull all the Z-Wave and replace it with Zigbee. (But the Aeotec smart plugs are really handy with the USB sockets on the side to power some sensors and displays in the living room… )
Thats sounds ok again.
I do an automated backup of my config.json every week to dropbox and use pimatic-save plugin for that (i made it for this purpose:))
If Z-Wave is troublesome there are enough alternatives. I’m using pimatic-raspbee for a lot of my devices (ikea, philips, xiaomi, etc).
And i’m using mqtt for some smartplugs (with tasmota) for power management.
