Problems Starting As A service

[The Dalek Hunter]

I am running CMX on a Raspberry Pi 4b booting from a USB hard disk.
I installed it by hand rather than using the image.

It has been running perfectly and I was starting it on boot up using @reboot (sleep 30;cd /home/pi/CumulusMX;sudo mono CumulusMX.exe) & as a Cron job.

I decided to try to start it as a service so as per instructions I copied cumulusmx.service to my /etc/systemd/system/ folder and edited it like this

[Unit]
Description=CumulusMX service
Documentation=https://cumuluswiki.org/a/Main_Page
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mono-service -d:/home/pi/CumulusMX CumulusMX.exe -service
Type=forking
ExecStopPost=/bin/rm /tmp/CumulusMX.exe.lock

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If I now issue a sudo a sudo systemctl start cumulusmx, sudo systemctl stop cumulusmx or sudo systemctl status cumulusmx it all works fine.

However if I do a sudo systemctl enable cumulusmx and then reboot CumulusMX never starts and sudo systemctl status cumulusm gives the following error.

Apr 26 07:21:04 CumulusMX-Pi systemd[1]: Starting CumulusMX service...
Apr 26 07:21:05 CumulusMX-Pi systemd[1]: Started CumulusMX service.
Apr 26 07:21:15 CumulusMX-Pi mono[366]: CumulusMX.exe: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Any suggestions ?

[mcrossley]

Please look in the MXdiags log file and see if there is a clue in there.

[The Dalek Hunter]

Ok - when attempting to start as a service here is the last few lines of the MXdiag log - when started via a Cron Job these lines do not appear

[freddie]

Looks like a DNS problem to me. DNS may not be available to resolve any FQDNs in the MX config at start-up. Sounds like it is available normally, but possibly not just when MX is starting on a reboot. So a timing issue.

[The Dalek Hunter]

So could I put a delay in the startup in CMX and how long should I put in?

[freddie]

A delay is a good idea. I would suggest experimenting with perhaps 60 seconds, then reducing it until you encounter the original error.

[The Dalek Hunter]

As the start by Cron has a delay of 30 seconds I tried that and it now starts perfectly.
I will leave it at that without any further meddling

Many many thanks.

[mcrossley]

Could you post the whole log file please.

I already have a fix for a DNS crash during the start-up ping in the next release, but your ping host is blank so that should not be coming into play, it looks like it is crashing somewhere else.

[mcrossley]

As you are running a WLL, if your have a Pro account I'd recommend that your set the start-up ping to "www.weatherlink.com", that ensures the Davis cloud is reachable before Cumulus attempts to download historic data from it during catch-up. You would want to set a ping escape time to something sensible too, otherwise Cumulus would never start if Davis was unreachable (or MX thought it was).

Though there is that DNS crash issue in the current version, so maybe hold off until the next release.

[The Dalek Hunter]

As I said above - I have put in a startup delay of 30 seconds under Program settings -> Start-up Delay (secs) and all is now well.

[mcrossley]

I'd still like teh log file though please. The delay is avoiding the issue, I'd like to get it fixed.

[The Dalek Hunter]

Sorry

Been away from my computer for a while.

How do I enable Diags when starting as a service ?

[freddie]

Stop MX. Search for DebugLogging=0 in your Cumulus.ini file and change the 0 to 1. Then save and restart MX.

[The Dalek Hunter]

DebugLogging=0 not found in Cumulus.ini

[mcrossley]

You will have to add it into the [station] section - with Cumulus Stopped.