Service Setup

In order to have your bot started automatically on system start we should set it up as a service.

General preparation

In order not to put confidential information into the configuration file we want to create a configuration file to hold these secrets. Also we will create a folder to put stored data and overlay files into. You can use other folders for those files, just remember to adjust the paths in all places. For this page I will assume the binary is placed in /usr/local/bin/twitch-bot_linux_amd64.

# First create a folder to hold our secret file(s)
$ mkdir /etc/twitch-bot

# Second create a folder to hold the data
$ mkdir -p /var/lib/twitch-bot/overlays

# Create the secrets file and secure access to it
$ touch /etc/twitch-bot/environment
$ chown root:root /etc/twitch-bot/environment
$ chmod 0600 /etc/twitch-bot/environment

# Edit the file to hold the secrets (use your favourite editor instead of nano)
$ nano /etc/twitch-bot/environment

Lets put this into the file we’ve just edited (replace the brackets, don’t leave them inside the file!):

BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000/

CONFIG=/var/lib/twitch-bot/config.yaml
LOG_LEVEL=info
OVERLAYS_DIR=/var/lib/twitch-bot/overlays

STORAGE_CONN_STRING=/var/lib/twitch-bot/storage.db
STORAGE_CONN_TYPE=sqlite
STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_PASS=[put a random secure password here]

TWITCH_CLIENT=[put the client-id from the preparations step here]
TWITCH_CLIENT_SECRET=[put the client-secret from the preparations step here]

If you want to use a database server like MariaDB or PostgreSQL adjust the STORAGE_CONN_* variables like described in the project README.

Option 1: Using a downloaded or compiled Binary

We will create a systemd service to start the binary using the environment variables file we’ve created in the preparation step. This file will be placed into /etc/systemd/system/twitch-bot.service:

[Unit]
Description=Twitch-Bot Service
After=network-online.target
Requires=network-online.target

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/twitch-bot/environment
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/twitch-bot_linux_amd64
Restart=Always
RestartSecs=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To enable and start the service which makes it automatically start on every server boot execute these commands:

$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl enable --now twitch-bot

After the first start a configuration file has been created at /var/lib/twitch-bot/config.yaml. You want to change the port in the http_listen line in this file:

# IP/Port to start the web-interface on. Format: IP:Port
# The default is 127.0.0.1:0 - Listen on localhost with random port
http_listen: "127.0.0.1:3000"

After changing the port restart the service once:

$ systemctl restart twitch-bot

To update the bot first stop the bot, then replace the binary and start the bot again:

$ systemctl stop twitch-bot
$ mv [path to new binary] /usr/local/bin/twitch-bot_linux_amd64
$ systemctl start twitch-bot

Option 2: Using a Docker image

[Unit]
Description=Twitch-Bot Service
After=network-online.target
Requires=network-online.target

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/twitch-bot/environment
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm -f %n
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull luzifer/twitch-bot:stable
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run --rm --name %n \
            --env-file /etc/twitch-bot/environment \
            -v /var/lib/twitch-bot:/var/lib/twitch-bot \
            -p 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 \
            luzifer/twitch-bot:stable
Restart=Always
RestartSecs=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To enable and start the service which makes it automatically start on every server boot execute these commands:

$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl enable --now twitch-bot

After the first start a configuration file has been created at /var/lib/twitch-bot/config.yaml. You want to change IP and port in the http_listen line in this file:

# IP/Port to start the web-interface on. Format: IP:Port
# The default is 127.0.0.1:0 - Listen on localhost with random port
http_listen: "0.0.0.0:3000"

After changing the port restart the service once:

$ systemctl restart twitch-bot

To update the bot just restart the service:

$ systemctl restart twitch-bot

Debugging the Service

In both options you created a service which is running as a system user. You can do the same things for both options to see what the bot is doing:

$ journalctl -fu twitch-bot

This will stream the logs of the bots into your terminal and you can read what the bot is doing.

In case the bot behaves unexpectedly you can increase the LOG_LEVEL from info to debug within the /etc/twitch-bot/environment file and restart the bot to get more verbose logs.