Hello! Can't seem to get the Service Part working.

[NicholasBear-Tech]

Hello!

Great work! I cannot seem to get the service setup so that it starts on boot. I believe that I have the right path in, and it doesn't seem to start on boot. I have it working when I CD into "keyboardTriggerServer" and run the "node server.js" command. I am new to this, but I got everything else working including the unclutter and modifying the keyboard button layout. This last step is what I need to finish. If You could explain a little more about what commands we need to run to get the path and where to put it in the script (I know you put where to change it.) that would be great! What if we put in another login name/password when we flashed the image, would that change the user/group in the file? How can we tell if it is working or not, is it if we do start and enable and it is not working?

Thanks again for the great work!

[Linkek]

Hey! First off, 'm really sorry for the late reply. I just saw your message now… a year later.

About the service not starting on boot, you’re on the right track. The most common issue is the username in the service file. If you used a different login than pi when flashing the image, you’ll want to update these lines in the service file:

User=your-username
Group=your-username

You can find your current username by running:
whoami

Also double-check the paths in ExecStart and WorkingDirectory, they need to point to the exact folder where server.js is.

To test the service manually:

sudo systemctl start keyboardTriggerServer
sudo systemctl status keyboardTriggerServer

If it fails, you can check the logs with:

journalctl -u keyboardTriggerServer.service --no-pager

And if it works, then enable it for boot:

sudo systemctl enable keyboardTriggerServer

Let me know if you're still around and want help.