Launch on startup no longer working on macOS

Describe Your Problem: I had a working Homebridge setup that launched in the background when my Mac started. After running updates to my Homebridge setup (npm update for it and all plugins), this launch on startup stopped working.

The command launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.homebridge.server.plist executed, but Homebridge does not start. It does start without issues manually in the Terminal. This command used to work.

Then I read about hb-service and removed my entire Homebridge setup to go with the new, easier route of sudo hb-service install but it didn’t start anything. The message did read:

ℹ Installing Homebridge Service
ℹ Starting Homebridge Service...
✔ Homebridge Started

Manage Homebridge by going to one of the following in your browser:

* http://localhost:8080
* http://192.168.2.2:8080
* http://[fe80::404:46fb:1125:232]:8080

Default Username: admin
Default Password: admin

✔ Homebridge Setup Complete

But nothing started. The .homebridge folder wasn’t created and Homebridge UI was not available. When doing sudo hb-service start it says:

ℹ Starting Homebridge Service...
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.homebridge.server.plist: service already loaded
✔ Homebridge Started

After a manual homebridge it ran a cleanly installed Homebridge. I quit it and moved all config files back. So my setup is working again, but still not in the background.

Any idea how I can get it to launch on startup in the background?

Could it be related to this warning during installation? npm WARN deprecated mkdirp@0.3.5: Legacy versions of mkdirp are no longer supported. Please update to mkdirp 1.x. (Note that the API surface has changed to use Promises in 1.x.)

Logs: hb-service logs gives:

✖ ERROR: Log file does not exist at expected location: /Users/Lex/.homebridge/homebridge.log

Environment:

• Node.js Version: v12.16.1
• NPM Version: 6.14.4
• Homebridge Version: 0.4.53
• Operating System: macOS 10.15.4
• Process Supervisor: I wish I knew. I think it should be hb-service, but that’s not working

[oznu]

Strange, it’s managed to figure out the username, “Lex” for the username key, but hasn’t correctly resolved the home directory for that user.

During my testing of standard installs on Mojave and Catalina this worked fine.

Try this:

sudo hb-service uninstall
sudo hb-service install -U /Users/Lex/.homebridge

[oznu]

In the homebridge-http-webhooks plugin config set the cache directory (the plugin should really just store files in the homebridge storage directory).

"platforms": [
  {
    "platform": "HttpWebHooks",
    "cache_directory": "/Users/Lex/.homebridge/http-webhooks"

And make that directory for good measure:

# do not use sudo
mkdir /Users/Lex/.homebridge/http-webhooks

Then restart.