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I have a raspberry pi which I want to turn into a web server. I have installed everything needed. Now my problem: I am using ngrok to get the server online. To do this all I have to do is running the following command in the terminal:

/home/pi/Downloads/ngrok http -subdomain=asimpledomain 80

Now I want this command to be executed on startup so I changed my rc.local file to this:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.


/home/pi/Downloads/ngrok http -subdomain=asimpledomain 80 &

exit 0

I have saved the files and rebooted but after booting up I found out that this is not working. Any ideas?

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5
  • I have no idea. It might help if you say in your post what you expected to happen and how you know it's not working. As a side question why not just do sudo apt-get install apache2?
    – joan
    May 7, 2015 at 8:15
  • apache2 is instaleed.What i expect is when pi has boot an ngrok tunnel to be created
    – cssGEEK
    May 7, 2015 at 11:18
  • As a matter of interest did you install ngrok from the Raspbian repository? I'd have assumed it would handle the initialisation automatically.
    – joan
    May 7, 2015 at 11:48
  • how can i install ngrok from repo?
    – cssGEEK
    May 7, 2015 at 12:24
  • apt-cache search ngrok shows ngrok-client and ngrok-server packages. Install the one(s) you want with sudo apt-get install ngrok-client and/or sudo apt-get install ngrok-server.
    – joan
    May 7, 2015 at 12:49

3 Answers 3

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3

You may want to try running a test to see if it throws errors without a reboot:

sudo service rc.local start

then check it from there. You may have to run it as a specific user:

sudo -u pi /home/pi/Downloads/ngrok http -subdomain=asimpledomain 80 &
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1
  • So if service rc.local start doesn't show an error, then it should execute correctly upon every boot of pi? Ngrok doesn't start for me.
    – IgorGanapolsky
    Jul 25, 2016 at 0:41
2

Have you tried exporting the path variables in the bashrc files?

My best guess is you do the following:

  1. put the ngrokdirectory in a bin/ directory in /home/pi

    mkdir bin

  2. give it executable mode

    sudo chmod +x bin/

  3. change path variables in .bashrc 

    sudo nano ~/.bashrc
# at the end of the file
export PATH=$PATH:bin/

  4. press CTRL+O and CTRL+X and then

    source ~/.bashrc

and maybe try rebooting it again.

I somehow think that maybe there might be problems with path variable settings.

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0

Have to tried accessing website without reboot and without modifying rc.local?

I suppose you can opt for crontab instead of rc.local..

crontab entry via crontab -e:

@reboot /home/pi/Downloads/ngrok http -subdomain=asimpledomain 80 & > /dev/null 2>&1
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7
  • what is > /dev/null 2>&1?
    – cssGEEK
    May 7, 2015 at 12:25
  • refer this link stackoverflow.com/a/10508862/4870299
    – nageswar rao
    May 7, 2015 at 12:26
  • I tried this but it is not working
    – cssGEEK
    May 7, 2015 at 13:05
  • Do you have paid account in ngrok? AFAIK ngrok allows own subdomain in paid account. For free account, try this command /home/pi/Downloads/ngrok tcp 80 See active tunnels with this command (if ngrok running in backgound) curl localhost:4040/api/tunnels
    – nageswar rao
    May 7, 2015 at 13:11
  • I don't need a paid account.If I try this from a terminal it works
    – cssGEEK
    May 7, 2015 at 13:12

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