ledticker-backend

making a flashlex backend to send messages to the led device

installing python3

python3 -m venv venv --system-site-packages
source venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3
import ssl
print (ssl.OPENSSL_VERSION)
OpenSSL 1.1.0j  20 Nov 2018

creating the systemd service

Instructions for setting up your service can be found at https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2015/10/how-to-autorun-a-python-script-on-boot-using-systemd/

sudo cp ledtickerbe.service /lib/systemd/system/ledtickerbe.service
sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/ledtickerbe.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ledtickerbe.service

add logging to syslog

Then, assuming your distribution is using rsyslog to manage syslogs, create a file in /etc/rsyslog.d/<new_file>.conf with the following content:

if $programname == '<your program identifier>' then /path/to/log/file.log
& stop

restart rsyslog (sudo systemctl restart rsyslog) and enjoy! Your program stdout/stderr will still be available through journalctl (sudo journalctl -u <your program identifier>) but they will also be available in your file of choice.

We have included a conf file that makes this easier. Use the instructions below to enable rsyslog for ledtickerbe.

sudo cp ledtickerbe.conf /etc/rsyslog.d/ledtickerbe.conf
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart ledtickerbe.service
sudo systemctl restart rsyslog

check the status of the service

sudo systemctl status ledtickerbe.service

rotating logs

you will want to rotate logs so your disk doesnt fill up with logs. your conf file for logrotation looks like this in /etc/logrotate.conf:

/var/log/ledtickerbe.log {
    daily
    missingok
    rotate 7
    maxage 7
    dateext
    dateyesterday
}

make a crontab that executes logrotate daily