[question] How can we start automatically the player when volumio reboots

[cmoulliard]

Question

How can we start automatically the player when volumio reboots ? I have created a bash script which is called by a crontab rule @reboot but nothing happens.

Remark : I can execute manually the bash script containing a curl command to call playplaylist and that works.

Steps

• Bash script file

volumio@volumio:~$ cat start-playlist.sh 
#/bin/sh
 
volumio=localhost:3000/api/v1/commands
until $(curl --silent --output /dev/null --head --fail ${volumio}); do
   echo "We wait till volumio is up and running"
   sleep 10s
done

echo "Volumio is running, so we restart the playlist"
curl localhost:3000/api/v1/commands/?cmd='playplaylist&name=PL_Classic21'

• Log generated during the reboot. As you can see, we get as response {"time":1546344101724,"response":"playplaylist Success"}

cat /var/log/cron.log
We wait till volumio is up and running
We wait till volumio is up and running
We wait till volumio is up and running
We wait till volumio is up and running
Volumio is running, so we restart the playlist
{"time":1546344101724,"response":"playplaylist Success"}

• Crontab definition

volumio@volumio:~$ cat /etc/crontab 
# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file
# and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields,
# that none of the other crontabs do.

MAILTO=""
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
...

## Reboot and use playlist defined / default
@reboot volumio /home/volumio/start-playlist.sh >> /var/log/cron.log

[cmoulliard]

I have added a sleep of 20s before to call curl where we execute the playplaylist command and that works but not every time as sometimes, volumio took much time to restart and been fully operational.

See my instructions - https://github.com/ch007m/my-volumio-dev/blob/master/README.md#automate-the-restart-of-the-web-radio-using-a-playlist

[xipmix]

The issue tracker is not really the place for questions (there are forums), but this looks more like an issue.

Possibly the answer here is a one-shot systemd service that runs After=volumio.service, rather than just @reboot since it may take volumio variable amounts of time to get ready. You may need to keep your 20s delay so that volumio is really ready (sometimes systemd has a different idea of what 'ready' is).

[cmoulliard]

Thanks for the heads up @xipmix. I will change the approach and use systemd.

As mentioned in a different forum thread, the best approach should be to enhance the auto-start plugin to let a user to select within the configuration using a popup list, the playlists that they would like to select OR the list of web radios, ...

[xipmix]

As mentioned in a different forum thread

Could you link that here please for future reference?

[cmoulliard]

See Play a configured item as defined here : https://volumio.org/forum/define-radio-per-default-started-t11374.html

[cmoulliard]

What is the status about this issue ? Will it become part of a fix and released soon ? @xipmix

[xipmix]

I have no idea, I'm afraid; @volumio takes these decisions. If we can figure out a patch and send a PR that should get accepted, eventually.

Let's define the feature you want more precisely. It sounds like you would like to see an 'auto-resume' control somewhere that allows you to tell volumio to start playing whatever is in the queue once it is fully started up. Correct? What's your thinking about which item under the 'cog' menu it should be added to? Possibly playback, could be restart, I'm not sure.

Edit - reread the thread above. Have you tried using the 'autostart' plugin? It has had some changes this year and might be useable now.

[cmoulliard]

It sounds like you would like to see an 'auto-resume' control somewhere that allows you to tell volumio to start playing whatever is in the queue once it is fully started up. Correct?

The use case is pretty simple. As a user, I would like that when volumio reboots, that it reconnects and plays to the last queue entry used before to stop. Such entry could by example my radio - ABCD).

[cmoulliard]

What's your thinking about which item under the 'cog' menu it should be added to? Possibly playback, could be restart, I'm not sure.

if it is not possible for the nodejs application to find the last entry to be played automatically at boot time, then we could imagine to have another entry under the playback menu, under the cog where the user could define what should the default web radio, ... to be played/started after a boot/reboot

[xipmix]

This sounds pretty close to what the autostart plugin should be doing. I installed it and gave it a try; added an album to playlist, rebooted partway through a track and it tried to play the interrupted track for me. (There's some unrelated issue that prevented it actually working but not relevant here).

[GOTO-GOSUB]

+1 here as well - all I want Volumio to do is play from an internet radio stream on startup. When I first set this up (on a Pi 3A+) and with the autostart plug-in installed it worked for 2 days and now every time the Pi restarts I have to go into the web GUI and hit the play button. I have ramped up the autostart delay to no avail. There are no networked or USB drives attached, no media servers. Just a couple of radio stations in my favorites. I don't know what changed on day 3 but even with resetting to defaults and starting again I cannot get this to work at all now. What I want the product do do sounds so simple - please, has anyone got this working ?

[AndreiPuchko]

just never stop :)

#/bin/sh
date > aplay.txt
volumio=localhost:3000/api/v1/commands
until $(curl --silent --output /dev/null --head --fail ${volumio}); do
   echo "We wait till volumio is up and running" >>aplay.txt
   sleep 5s
done

until curl --silent localhost:3000/api/v1/getState | grep -q '"status":"play"';
do
     echo "starting..." >>aplay.txt
     curl --silent ${volumio}/?cmd=play >>aplay.txt
     sleep 5s
done
echo "done" >>aplay.txt