systemd Notify for Home Assistant

A Home Assistant integration that sends systemd watchdog and ready notifications. If Home Assistant freezes, systemd's watchdog will automatically restart the service.

Installation

HACS (Recommended)

1. Open HACS in Home Assistant
2. Go to Integrations and click the three-dot menu
3. Select Custom repositories and add:
   • Repository: brianegge/home-assistant-sdnotify
   • Category: Integration
4. Click Download on the sdnotify card
5. Restart Home Assistant

Manual

1. Copy custom_components/sdnotify/ to your config/custom_components/sdnotify/ directory
2. Restart Home Assistant

Configuration

1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration
2. Search for systemd Notify and click it
3. Click Submit to confirm

No YAML configuration is needed.

systemd Setup

Your systemd unit file (e.g., /etc/systemd/system/homeassistant.service) should include watchdog settings:

[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=notify
Environment=WATCHDOG_USEC=5000000
User=homeassistant
WorkingDirectory=/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant
ExecStart=/srv/homeassistant/bin/hass -c "/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant"
WatchdogSec=20
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then reload systemd:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart homeassistant.service

How It Works

The integration creates a binary sensor that:

• Sends READY=1 to systemd when Home Assistant has started
• Periodically sends WATCHDOG=1 pings (interval based on WATCHDOG_USEC env var, default 5 seconds)
• Shows as a problem sensor until the ready notification is sent

If WATCHDOG_USEC is not set (i.e., not running under systemd), the sensor will not poll.

Removal

1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services
2. Find systemd Notify and click the three-dot menu
3. Select Delete
4. Optionally uninstall via HACS

Credit

Originally based on https://gist.github.com/yottatsa/2395de4ea665fecabf1dfb63796a546b