Automatically start a program at Raspbian - Raspberry Pi 3

Question

I'm using a Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian distribution.

I've written a script in Python 3 and I would need to start it up automatically just when system boots up, without logging in.

Answer 1

Raspberry PI has quite good support. Tasks can be schedualed with usage of "crontab" command.

You can find documentation on: Documentation

Within this documentation you have example for running "python" script on Raspberry Pi reboot.

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

I would recommend using systemd to achieve this. Take for example your python script is called hello.py.

1. Create a systemd service file at /lib/systemd/system/hello.service :

    [Unit] Description=hello.py service file After=multi-user.target [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /dir/to/your/hello.py Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target 

The full list of commands and functions for the systemd service file can be found here .

2. Add appropriate permissions to the .service file: sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/hello.service

3. Reload the systemd daemon: sudo systemctl daemon-reload

4. Enable the hello systemd service: sudo systemctl enable hello.service

You can check that your service is running by using the command: sudo systemctl status hello.service and check for any errors using sudo journalctl