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As many people, i'm looking to use my pi as a kiosk. I have managed to get everything running when starting the kiosk.

my kiosk.sh script, which works fine

#!/bin/bash

URL="http://127.0.0.1"
xset s noblank
xset s off
xset -dpms

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' /home/pi/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences
sed -i 's/"exit_type":"Crashed"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' /home/pi/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

unclutter -idle 0.5 -root &

/usr/bin/chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --disable-infobars --kiosk $URL &

I am able to autostart this script thorugh /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart 

@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
#@xscreensaver -no-splash
point-rpi

@bash /home/pi/kiosk/kiosk.sh

However, when I try the same using a unit file, that does not work. I commented out the last line of autostart before starting the service

[Unit]
Description=Chromium Dashboard
Requires=graphical.target
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0
Environment=XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/pi/kiosk/kiosk.sh
Restart=on-abort
User=pi
Group=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

this is the output of systemctl status pi@kiosk.service

● pi@kiosk.service - Chromium Dashboard
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/pi@kiosk.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2019-10-21 20:38:56 CEST; 2s ago
  Process: 1417 ExecStart=/home/pi/kiosk/kiosk.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1417 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Oct 21 20:38:55 countdown systemd[1]: Started Chromium Dashboard.
Oct 21 20:38:56 countdown systemd[1]: pi@kiosk.service: Succeeded.

so I would like to know where I am going wrong here. I should get the same response both ways but I dont.

Ingo
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Marc Wagner
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1 Answers1

5

The Unit file looks very good for a program to start as service. systemd runs services automatically in the background. But your script is sending unclutter and chromium-browser to the background additional using &. After doing that the bash script terminates successful with exit code 0 and that is what systemctl status show you with:

Process: 1417 ExecStart=/home/pi/kiosk/kiosk.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Everything is OK from the view of systemd but it has lost any control about chromium-browser that is running everywhere in the background. You should be able to find it with ps aux | grep chromium-browser. If you really want to run it as old-style daemon by sending it to the background you may have a look at man systemd.service using Type=forking and maybe PIDFile= and other things to control forked daemons. But I don't believe that it will work because the commands are wrapped into a bash script and systemd cannot see them.

I would suggest to delete the last two lines from the script and try this Unit:

[Unit]
Description=Chromium Dashboard
Requires=graphical.target
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0
Environment=XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority
ExecStartPre=/home/pi/kiosk/kiosk.sh
ExecStart=usr/bin/chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --disable-infobars --kiosk $URL
Restart=on-abort
User=pi
Group=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

This is only to give an idea how it could work. Of course you have to look how to define $URL within the Unit. I don't know your setup. You cannot start a second service unclutter e.g. with ExecStartPre=/full/path/to/unclutter -idle 0.5 -root. If you need to run it in the background before chromium-browser then you have to make its own Unit and start kiosk.service After that.

Ingo
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