Tag Archives: systemctl

Azure Smartish Edge Camera – Background Service

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This is a “note to self” post about deploying a .NET Core Worker Service to a Raspberry PI 4B 8G running Raspberry PI OS (Bullseye). After reading many posts, then a lot of trial and error this approach appeared to work reliably for my system configuration.(Though YMMV with other distros etc.)

The first step was to create a new Worker Service project in Visual Studio 2019

VS 2019 Add new Worker Service project wizard
VS 2019 Add new Worker Service project name
Visual Studio 2019 NuGet management

I intentionally did not update the Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting and Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.Systemd (for UseSystemd) NuGet packages for my initial development.

using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting;

namespace devMobile.IoT.MachineLearning.AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService
{
	public class Program
	{
		public static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			CreateHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
		}

		public static IHostBuilder CreateHostBuilder(string[] args) =>
			 Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
					.UseSystemd()
				  .ConfigureServices((hostContext, services) =>
				  {
					  services.AddHostedService<Worker>();
				  });
	}
}

program.cs

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

namespace devMobile.IoT.MachineLearning.AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService
{
	public class Worker : BackgroundService
	{
		private readonly ILogger<Worker> _logger;

		public Worker(ILogger<Worker> logger)
		{
			_logger = logger;
		}

		protected override async Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken)
		{
			while (!stoppingToken.IsCancellationRequested)
			{
				_logger.LogInformation("Worker running at: {time}", DateTimeOffset.Now);

				await Task.Delay(1000, stoppingToken);
			}
		}
	}
}

Worker.cs

The first step was to create a new directory (AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService) on the device. In Visual Studio 2019 I “published” my application and copied the contents of the “publish” folder to the Raspberry PI with Winscp. (This intermediary folder was to avoid issues with the permissions of the /usr/sbin/ & etc/systemd/system folders)

Using Winscp to copy files to AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService folder on my device
Install service

Test in application directory
	/home/pi/.dotnet/dotnet AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService.dll

Make service directory
	sudo mkdir /usr/sbin/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService

Copy files to service directory
	sudo cp *.* /usr/sbin/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService

Copy .service file to systemd folderclear
	sudo cp AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService.service /etc/systemd/system/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService.service
 
Force reload of systemd configuration
	sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start the Azure IoT SmartEdge Camera service
	sudo systemctl start AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService
Installing and starting the AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService 
Uninstall service
	sudo systemctl stop AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService

	sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService.service

	sudo systemctl daemon-reload

	sudo rm /usr/sbin/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService/*.*

	sudo rmdir /usr/sbin/AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService

	See what is happening
	journalctl -xe
Stopping and removing the AzureIoTSmartEdgeCameraService

It took a lot of attempts to get a clean install then uninstall for the screen captures.