Mopidy as service crashes and is missing iris extension

General
1

Hi,
i am running mopidy on a raspberry.
I installed it using the following commands from (New users can only post 2 links)

wget -q -O - (New users can only post 2 links) | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget -q -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mopidy.list apt.mopidy.com/jessie.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mopidy

Then i installed iris:

pip install Mopidy-Iris

Then i installed the spotify extension:

sudo apt-get install mopidy-spotify

then i installed the MQTT extension:
from here
(New users can only post 2 links)

cd ~
git clone /magcode/mopidy-mqtt.git
cd mopidy-mqtt
sudo python setup.py develop

Then i edited the config under

~/.config/mopidy/mopidy.conf

Enabled HTTP, did the configs for spotify and MQTTHook as well as iris.
Then i started mopidy with

mopidy

Everything works good: Iris is there, spotify is connected, music comes out of the box, mqtt addon also working.

Now i tried to install it as service, and everything starts to fail.

I did the following:
From (New users can only post 2 links)

Copied the config from ~/.config/mopidy/mopidy.conf
to /etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf

Then started the service:

sudo systemctl enable mopidy
sudo systemctl start mopidy

So far so good. After a while when i check

sudo service mopidy status

It gives me this:

● mopidy.service - Mopidy music server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mopidy.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2018-01-28 19:57:19 UTC; 11min ago
Process: 18616 ExecStartPre=/bin/chown mopidy:audio /var/cache/mopidy (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 18613 ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /var/cache/mopidy (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 18620 (mopidy)
CGroup: /system.slice/mopidy.service
└─18620 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/mopidy --config /usr/share/mopidy/conf.d:/etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf

Jan 28 19:57:40 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Starting Mopidy frontends: MQTTFrontend, MpdFrontend, HttpFronten
Jan 28 19:57:40 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO mopidy_mqtt initializing …
Jan 28 19:57:40 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO MPD server running at [::ffff:127.0.0.1]:6600
Jan 28 19:57:40 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO HTTP server running at [::ffff:192.168.0.39]:6680
Jan 28 19:57:40 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Starting GLib mainloop
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Connected with result code 0
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Subscribed to home/livingroom/music/play
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO sub:home/livingroom/music/control
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO sub:home/livingroom/music/volume
Jan 28 19:57:42 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Logged in to Spotify in online mode

Looks good so far.
But when i access mopidy via WEB, there is no iris:
image
Remember: it was there when running mopidy just with “mopidy” command.

And when i try to start a playlist (via MQTTHook extension, which worked well as well before):

● mopidy.service - Mopidy music server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mopidy.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2018-01-28 20:11:32 UTC; 11s ago
Process: 18620 ExecStart=/usr/bin/mopidy --config /usr/share/mopidy/conf.d:/etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf (code=exited, st
Process: 18616 ExecStartPre=/bin/chown mopidy:audio /var/cache/mopidy (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 18613 ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /var/cache/mopidy (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 18620 (code=exited, status=255)

Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Connected with result code 0
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Subscribed to home/livingroom/music/play
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO sub:home/livingroom/music/control
Jan 28 19:57:41 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO sub:home/livingroom/music/volume
Jan 28 19:57:42 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO Logged in to Spotify in online mode
Jan 28 20:11:25 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: INFO received a message on home/livingroom/music/play with payload spo
Jan 28 20:11:32 raspberrypi mopidy[18620]: * failed to open vchiq instance
Jan 28 20:11:32 raspberrypi systemd[1]: mopidy.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a
Jan 28 20:11:32 raspberrypi systemd[1]: mopidy.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jan 28 20:11:32 raspberrypi systemd[1]: mopidy.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.

So as soon as it has to play music it crashes.

What am i doing wrong? Why is iris not there and why does it fail?
Did i follow the wrong tutorials?

Greetings

2

The service cannot see extensions that were installed in your users home directory which is where pip now defaults to using. You must run sudo pip install mopidy-iris.

As for the crashing, I think that’s because in the latest raspbian you also need the mopidy user (used when running Mopidy as a service) to be a member of the video group in order to access the hdmi port (which I’m guessing you are doing).

3

Thank you for your answer! Will try that “pip” with “sudo”.
I am using the headphone jack, but when googling for “failed to open vchiq instance” they said something similar to you on another product. Maybe i am missing a config entry to set it to the headphone jack (did not copy the whole config, just the parts i changed), or it needs to access HDMI at all times?

can i set mopidy as some kind of “Administrator” so i will not run into problems like this?

4

Giving the Mopidy user the correct permission is the correct solution. Running it as root user is an unnecessary hack. But it’s your system, of course!

I don’t recall which output Raspbian currently defaults to but if you look at the raspberry pi specific install instructions in our documentation, it does mention how to switch between the two.

5

Thanks a lot for that information, everything working now :slight_smile:
added “mopidy” users to the “sudoers” file

6

Just to to be really clear to anyone else that ends up here, that workaround is definitely not recommended. Fixing the permissions properly is the answer.