TASK screenly install pip dependencies seems to hang

Anthias
1

I was going through the installation of stable version via bash curl with brand new Pi running Raspbian Stretch Lite…
I wanted to note down anything I encountered from step 1 until finish, and I have a few notes down at work and some troubleshooting notes like plymouth quit service needing chmod to 0644 due to throwing some errors for being executable similar to this:

https://www.svennd.be/systemd-configuration-file-is-marked-executable-please-remove-executable-permission-bits-proceeding-anyway

, but one I especially remember seen and hearing others mention is the fact that during some TASKs from ansible playbook the system seems to get stuck and as you can see from picture I pressed two keys just to test system was still alive and that pip dependencies install was frozen for about 15 or more minutes, but as soon as I pressed the enter key like 5 times rapidly - the task finished and went right to the next one.

blurry picture of TASK stuck:
image

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Now, about that plymouth error log:

Does making the changes here make sense for this specific service?

- name: Copy plymouth-quit-wait.service
  copy:
    src: plymouth-quit-wait.service
    dest: /lib/systemd/system/plymouth-quit-wait.service
    mode: 0755 --> change to 0644?
    owner: root
    group: root

- name: Copy plymouth-quit.service
  copy:
    src: plymouth-quit.service
    dest: /lib/systemd/system/plymouth-quit.service
    mode: 0755 --> change to 0644?
    owner: root
    group: root
2

went through process again with different Pi and repeated exact steps in same place same network same everything, this time it did take a bit less time i did not time it, but pressing enter a few or more times did not do anything. Is this just normal for it to take upwards of 20+ minutes or randomly unknown time?

this is low priority of course, but if there is a way to show progress of this action or underlying progress like this:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_async.html
it would probably help users not touch anything and know to leave it alone that it is working in the background…

3

Thank you for the work done! Changing permissions makes sense in my opinion.
Asynchronous mode for a long task of installing pip packages sounds good to me too.
Have you already try to update Screenly this way?

4

Thanks rusko…
No I have not, I will make the changes on a forked version and see how it goes sometime this week, I dont have that many Pi’s to run different configurations and test things with.

5

Hm
I wrote the latest image of Screenly to the USB flash,
then started update with . /bin/run_upgrade.sh command.
Task * Install pip dependencies * passed fast in my case.

Device : Raspberry pi 3b+

6

Since there are so many different configurations of Pis with various SD cards and the users network environment who run the upgrade or full installation (which was my case, not upgrade, which makes time higher since it is creating all new files and installing libraries and things it didn’t have before), this information can vary a lot, thus async polling on installation tasks should at the very least let users know that there is something working on the background.
I don’t see the downside to adding this, what do you think?

7

@rusko124 - maybe im doing something wrong, but when i add the async poll under the dependencies of TASK screenly : install pip dependencies or any other, during install, I dont see the -, /, \ chars moving letting me know it is working on it…

Example:

- name: Install pip dependencies
  pip: requirements=/home/pi/screenly/requirements.txt
    async: 1200
    poll: 10

. . .
or this one that took long the first time:

- name: Remove deprecated apt dependencies
  async: 1200
  poll: 10
  apt:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: absent

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Am I putting the ansible command in the wrong place?