Zigbee2mqtt installed! sytemctl not happy :(

[CatmanV2]

Hello oh great ones.

After a couple of hours messing with ports and permissions I have Zigbee2mqtt installed and running on my virtual pi

Can connect to the front end and everything

Odd one though, simply cannot get systemctl to work and the error is, well, unhelpful. The service file is this:

[Unit]
Description=zigbee2mqtt
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node index.js
WorkingDirectory=/opt/zigbee2mqtt
StandardOutput=inherit
# Or use StandardOutput=null if you don't want Zigbee2MQTT messages filling syslog, for more options see systemd.exec(5)
StandardError=inherit
WatchdogSec=10s
Restart=always
RestartSec=10s
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Straight out of the docs with the change to point to my local node install (which we know works as it's the same as the very fine Reactor is using.

Running manually pnpm start

in /opt/zigbee2mqtt works fine

However:

catman@openluup:/etc/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl start zigbee2mqtt.service
Job for zigbee2mqtt.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status zigbee2mqtt.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

Which I have

catman@openluup:/etc/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl status zigbee2mqtt.service
● zigbee2mqtt.service - zigbee2mqtt
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/zigbee2mqtt.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2025-12-16 12:32:42 GMT; 4s ago
  Process: 3093 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node index.js (code=exited, status=217/USER)
 Main PID: 3093 (code=exited, status=217/USER)

and

-- A start job for unit zigbee2mqtt.service has begun execution.
-- 
-- The job identifier is 17477.
Dec 16 12:35:16 openluup systemd[3178]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
Dec 16 12:35:16 openluup systemd[3178]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed at step USER spawning /usr/local/bin/node: No such process
-- Subject: Process /usr/local/bin/node could not be executed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- The process /usr/local/bin/node could not be executed and failed.
-- 
-- The error number returned by this process is ERRNO.
Dec 16 12:35:16 openluup systemd[1]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
-- Subject: Unit process exited
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- An ExecStart= process belonging to unit zigbee2mqtt.service has exited.
-- 
-- The process' exit code is 'exited' and its exit status is 217.
Dec 16 12:35:16 openluup systemd[1]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
-- Subject: Unit failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- The unit zigbee2mqtt.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 16 12:35:16 openluup systemd[1]: Failed to start zigbee2mqtt.
-- Subject: A start job for unit zigbee2mqtt.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- A start job for unit zigbee2mqtt.service has finished with a failure.

Which strikes me as very odd.

Any blindingly obvious things I'm missing?

TIA!

C

[toggledbits]

Have you looked in the logs in /var/log for other messages? Usually there's a good bit more chatter there that can be helpful.

[CatmanV2]

Good call. Syslog:

Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[1]: Stopped zigbee2mqtt.
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[1]: Starting zigbee2mqtt...
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[2984]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[2984]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed at step USER spawning /usr/local/bin/node: No such process
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[1]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[1]: zigbee2mqtt.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 16 12:30:09 openluup systemd[1]: Failed to start zigbee2mqtt.

Same message in all of them

zigbee2mqtt doesn't even log when started from systemctl

C

[CatmanV2]

FFS!

User=pi

Looks like it's fixed

C