systemd service fails to start

[ikewinski]

After manual installation in Ubuntu 24.04 I'm able to run "hyperglass start" by hand, but the systemd service fails. The sample service file I'm using contains this:

ExecStart=python3 -m hyperglass.console start

When manually running the same command I get this error:

/usr/bin/python3: Error while finding module specification for 'hyperglass.console' (ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'hyperglass')

I also noticed, maybe unrelated, after doing systemctl daemon-reload this error:

2025-05-15T12:39:58.342156-06:00 hyperglass systemd[1]: Reloading...
2025-05-15T12:39:59.058897-06:00 hyperglass systemd[1]: /etc/systemd/system/hyperglass.service:4: Failed to add dependency on redis-server, ignoring: Invalid argument

redis-server is available and started so I'm not sure why that dependency is failing:

hyperglass:~$ sudo systemctl status redis-server
● redis-server.service - Advanced key-value store
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/redis-server.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-05-15 12:12:36 MDT; 41min ago
       Docs: http://redis.io/documentation,
             man:redis-server(1)
   Main PID: 698 (redis-server)
     Status: "Ready to accept connections"
      Tasks: 7 (limit: 4610)
     Memory: 14.5M (peak: 14.8M)
        CPU: 16.999s
     CGroup: /system.slice/redis-server.service
             └─698 "/usr/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379"

May 15 12:12:36 den-lg.massivenetworks.net systemd[1]: Starting redis-server.service - Advanced key-value store...
May 15 12:12:36 den-lg.massivenetworks.net systemd[1]: Started redis-server.service - Advanced key-value store.

I feel like one or both of these are user error and appreciate help.

[jdhall75]

Hello! Sorry to hear you are having troubles getting Hyperglass up and running. Lets see if we can find out what's breaking down with the Hyperglass install.

Python

Please provide the output of the following commands.

• show where hyperglass got installed
  • pip3 show hyperglass
• Find out where python3 can import from
  • python3 -c "import sys; print('\n'.join(sys.path))"

Systemd - Redis

You might try and edit the Requires directive in the unit file.
You could try and specify the fully qualified name of the service: Requires=redis-server -> Requires=redis-server.service
This file should be in /etc/hyperglass/hyperglass.service if you followed the manual install directions.

Let me know.

[ikewinski]

Thank you for your reply. First to the easy one - setting Requires=redis-server.service does resolve the daemon-reload error, thank you!

On my first try of manual install I was stopped at this:

`$ pip3 install -e .
error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
install.

If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
sure you have python3-full installed.

If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.

See /usr/share/doc/python3.12/README.venv for more information.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.`

This isn't the first time I've run into this, and I have never had the time to really sort out use of venv. I knew that pipx could take care of this for me so instead of I did: pipx install -e ., pipx ensurepath and pipx completions after which I was able to manually run hyperglass.

To answer your specific questions:

`hyperglass:$ pip3 show hyperglass
WARNING: Package(s) not found: hyperglass
hyperglass:$ python3 -c "import sys; print('\n'.join(sys.path))"

/usr/lib/python312.zip
/usr/lib/python3.12
/usr/lib/python3.12/lib-dynload
/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages
hyperglass:~$ `

I get the same output whether I do that as root or the user that hyperglass was installed under. This raises for me the whole larger question of - I'm told "don't run pip or virtualenv as root", but hyperglass will ultimately be run as root by the systemd service - how do I ensure root/systemd run environment reflects everything needed? At this point I have installed pnpm and node as both root and as the hyperglass user.

I've tried install as root also now, with these steps:

python3 -m venv /root/hyperglass/.env/ /root/hyperglass/.env/bin/pip3 install -e .

Install works fine, and after I can run /root/hyperglass/.env/bin/python3 -m hyperglass.console start. I still get the same ouput of pip3 show hyperglass and python3 -c "import sys; print('\n'.join(sys.path))"

When starting the service I get:

2025-05-20T11:58:27.460181-06:00 hyperglass python3[1731]: /usr/bin/python3: Error while finding module specification for 'hyperglass.console' (ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'hyperglass')

If I code the full path in ExecStart like ExecStart=/root/hyperglass/.env/bin/python3 -m hyperglass.console start then I get a longer error, attached
service-error.txt

[jdhall75]

From the service-error.txt that you posted it looks like Node is not being found in the exec path. As one of the 2 users that you installed it under run which node and it should give you the full path to node. If this is just a local user install then the system won't know about it when launching the service. You may see a path something like /root/.local/share/node/...

Sometimes installers for stuff like node and pnpm install a "shim" into the Bash environment to update the users PATH so their executables can be found in a non-standard location.

I will walk through the manual install on my side and see if I can come up with the secret incantation to get this working Ubuntu.

[jdhall75]

Good morning and sorry for the delay. I was having an issue with nftables on my system. Anyway, here is what I would do to get the service up and running. As the user that you would like to run hyperglass as run the following commands

• which node
• which python # with the hyperglass virtual environment activated

Collect the paths up to the bin directory(ie /opt/node/bin/node -> /opt/node/bin)
Then edit the /etc/hyperglass/hyperglass.env file and set the PATH for the service's environment. There is an example below.

Test environment

/opt
├── hyperglass # hyperglass repo
├── hyperglass-python # hyperglass virtual environment
├── node -> /opt/node-v22.16.0-linux-x64 # symlink to current LTS node
└── node-v22.16.0-linux-x64 # Node LTS prebuilt binaries

/etc/hyperglass/hyperglass.env

# set the PATH for the hyperglass.service
PATH=/opt/node/bin:/opt/hyperglass-python/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

There are no edits to the service unit file. but it should look like this

[Unit]
Description=hyperglass
After=network.target
Requires=redis-server.service

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
EnvironmentFile=/etc/hyperglass/hyperglass.env
ExecStart=python3 -m hyperglass.console start

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now the application should be able to find the node, pnpm, and python[3] executables without having to hard code the path to them due to the EnvironmentFile setting the PATH.

I will be updating the documentation to reflect the limitation of not being able to install packages to the global python environment.

[ikewinski]

Thank you! I was able to get the service running correctly as unprivileged user.

One other thing that may have helped is that I changed how nodejs was installed, switching from script install method to package via deb.nodesource.com which puts it in /usr/bin

Matching what you did with installation paths my env file path is:
PATH=/opt/hyperglass-python/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

My service file is default but changed user/group to unprivileged user.