[OZAPRS] Direwolf on RPi

[Andrew Errington]

There's no problem using cron to do this, however, the thing that
trips most people up is that the environment that exists when cron
does something is not the same environment that you see when you log
in, i.e. paths may be different, environment variables may be
different, etc.

The first thing to check is which user are you editing crontab for? By
default it's the logged in user, which is probably 'pi'. That might be
what you want, or it might be that you want 'root'.

Secondly, in your @reboot command line you refer to 'direwolf' with no
path. Maybe that will be ok, or maybe it needs to be explicit.
Similarly 'sdr.conf' might need an explicit path.

Since others have mentioned there is a documented way to do this then
consider that instead, but cron is a powerful tool that is worth
understanding anyway.

73,

Andrew
ZL3AME

On 14/07/2020, Josh VK2HFF <vk2hff at vk2hff.ampr.org> wrote:
> Hi Norm,
> I'd suggest starting direwolf via systemd - that's how Linux services
> are run, monitored and managed.
> I wrote down some (very) brief notes on how to set up a systemd service
> for direwolf the other day, see
> http://aprs.vk2hff.ampr.org/direwolf-systemd.html
> Happy to help off list if you need a hand sorting it out.
>
> - Josh VK2HFF
>
>
> On 14/07/2020 1:27 pm, Norm McMillan wrote:
>>
>> Good afternoon and welcome to my nightmare
>>
>> Running the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite 32 bit –previously  known as
>> Raspbian Buster - on a Pi 3B+. Trying to auto-start direwolf at
>> reboot. Wrote a cron job in nano using crontab –e
>>
>>
>>
>> @reboot /usr/bin/rtl_fm –f 145.175M - | direwolf –c sdr.conf –r 24000 –D
>> –
>>
>>
>>
>> The file saved without error and assured me that the new crontab had
>> been installed. Now at reboot, quick as a flash, nothing happens. No
>> error message. Nada. Almost as if the cron job isn’t being run... or
>> read... or something. I know the command line works, that’s how I’m
>> starting it at the moment.
>>
>> So what have I done wrong, or not done right? 🤔
>>
>>
>> norm vk3xci
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OZAPRS mailing list
>> OZAPRS at aprs.net.au
>> http://lists.aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs
>
>
>