Sab won't start as a service on Linux Mint unless I log in after startup

[BlueKimba]

I am setting up a laptop with the latest version of Linux Mint (22.3). I have been running Sabnzbdplus as a service on an older laptop, which runs Mint 21, and it's been running beautifully on that machine,

On the new laptop, I followed the instructions in the Wiki for installing the Ubuntu version of Sabnzbdplus and setting it up as a service, running with USER set to my own username. AFAIK, this is much the same as what I did on the old machine.

My problem is that the service fails to start on boot, unless I immediately login after it boots. If I login immediately, the service starts and it seems to run fine.

When it doesn't start, the error message from ""systemctl status sabnzbdplus.service" says "Cannot create folder "/home/leon/.sabnzbd"." So, for some reason it needs me to login before it has permission, even though I am running it with USER=leon set in /etc/default/sabnzbdplus.

One thing that comes to mind is that I backed up my Sab config file on the old machine", and then restored it on the new machine. When it runs, it runs beautifully again.

At least I've worked out the pattern now, so that's some progress.

I'm feeling a bit out of my depth here, so thanks in advance for any help.

[sander]

> says "Cannot create folder "/home/leon/.sabnzbd"
> though I am running it with USER=leon set in /etc/default/sabnzbdplus.

Does /home/leon/.sabnzbd exist? Who is the owner, what are the rights?

EDIT: so:

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$ ls -ld ~/.sabnzbd
drwxrwxr-x 4 sander sander 4096 Jul 11 14:12 /home/sander/.sabnzbd

And that's good: I'm the owner, and I've writing rights.

[BlueKimba]

Apologies for the slow reply... I am new to this forum, and was expecting to get an email if someone replied to my post.

Yes, the file did exist. These were the ownership and rights:

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ls -ld /home /home/leon /home/leon/.sabnzbd
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 Jul 27 11:52 /home
drwxr-x--- 22 leon leon 4096 Jul 30 12:22 /home/leon
drwxr-xr-x  4 leon leon 4096 Jul 29 14:53 /home/leon/.sabnzbd

In the meantime, I got frustrated, so I did

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apt-get purge sabnzbdplus

and then I reinstalled it from the Mint GUI. It gave me two choices, sabnzbdplus and sabnzbd from flatpak, so I chose the first. Then I used the Mint GUI to add it to startup applications, and it started on boot!

I then edited

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~/.config/autostart/sabnzbdplus.desktop

to change it to

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--browser 0

because I don’t want it to start Firefox. It seems to be working nicely.

[BlueKimba]

OK, I've fixed my notification settings so that I will get an email if someone replies.

[jcfp]

If you have an encrypted homedir, it's only unlocked after you log in. So that doesn't mix with running sabnzbdplus as a system service with its config in there, because such services all start before you can login. Having the desktop environment autostart the application is one of the ways to work around that issue, so you should be all set.

[BlueKimba]

Thanks for explaining!

I decided that I'm better off without the encryption, so I removed it (roughly following https://www.howtogeek.com/116179/how-to ... ng-ubuntu/).

I agree with a comment made on another forum that the Mint installation process suggests it's a good thing to have, without any hint that there are tradeoffs.