Manage viam-server
How you control viam-server will depend on whether or not you installed it as a system service. Find information for each situation in the tabs below.
As a system service
After setting up the system service per the Linux install instructions, the AppImage binary will be located at
By default, the viam-server is configured to start when the machine boots.
Sometimes you may want to manually start, stop or restart the viam-server systemd service, for instance, when troubleshooting. You can use the following commands to do so:
Start:
sudo systemctl start viam-server
Stop:
sudo systemctl stop viam-server
Restart:
sudo systemctl restart viam-server
Enable (start automatically after boot):
sudo systemctl enable viam-server
Disable (do not start automatically after boot):
sudo systemctl disable viam-server
From the command line
If you want to run the binary directly, be sure to stop the service first, then run sudo /usr/local/bin/viam-server path/to/my/config.json.
Note that on a Raspberry Pi, viam-server must always run as root in order to access the DMA subsystem for GPIO.
Run viam-server from the command line
(Recommended method on macOS)
You can run viam-server by running the following command, always making sure to replace <YOUR_ROBOT_NAME> with the name of your robot from the Viam app.
viam-server -config ~/Downloads/viam-<YOUR_ROBOT_NAME>-main.json
You can also store the config file in a different folder (other than Downloads)–just make sure to run the above command with the correct filepath if you do so.
Hit Ctrl + C on your keyboard to stop running viam-server.
Run as a system service
Installing viam-server as a system service is not recommended for most use cases on macOS.
However, if you are looking to create a robot that runs on macOS and you want it to run viam-server every time your OS boots up, then you will need to run viam-server as a service.
Once you have viam-server downloaded locally from Homebrew, you will need to use the following commands to control the service:
Start:
brew services start viam-server
Stop:
brew services stop viam-server
Restart:
brew services restart viam-server
Troubleshooting
View Logs
sudo journalctl --unit=viam-server
If the robot is able to connect with the Viam app, logs can also be viewed in the LOGS tab on the Viam app.
SquashFS Errors
Looks like this…
Feb 10 13:11:26 hydro3-pi viam-server[933]: Something went wrong trying to read the squashfs image.
Feb 10 13:11:26 hydro3-pi viam-server[933]: open dir error: No such file or directory
The update process may have been interrupted and left a corrupt file. Simply redownload the new file as instructed above.
FUSE Errors
FUSE (Filesystem-in-Userspace), is included in almost all modern Linux distributions by default. (The one real exception is that it doesn’t work (by default) due to security restrictions within Docker containers.) For more information on troubleshooting FUSE-related issues (including Docker workarounds) see here: I get some errors related to something called “FUSE” — AppImage documentation.
View viam-server Logs
If you have already successfully connected viam-server to the Viam app, you can find all the viam-server logs on the LOGS tab of the Viam app.
You can also read viam-server’s log files locally.
cat $(brew --prefix)/var/log/viam.log