Hi,

I'm running thttpd to serve my static content. What's the best/correct way to have it run at startup? Should I add a line to rc.local? I'm running Suse 9.

Thanks,

Rob

Adding it to rc.local is a perfectly valid (and simple) way to start it, but note that this will always be started regardless of the runlevel.

The “better” way is to create a script in /etc/init.d that starts the daemon if called with the command-line option “start”, stops it with “stop”, restarts it with “restart”, or reloads it (signals it to re-read its configuration files, if any) with “reload”. You can then create a symbolic link to this script in each of the various runlevel directories, of this form:

/etc/rcX.d/SYYname

Where:
X is the runlevel (one symlink for each runlevel)
S means start the daemon on entering this runlevel (replace with K to stop the daemon instead)
YY is a number; daemons are started/stopped in the order when sorted by this number
name is the name of the script to start/stop the daemon

The only real advantage of the latter approach is that you can then use the YaST's runlevel editor to start and stop the daemon.

Thanks rjlee - very helpful.

Think I'll go for the "better" approach, like the idea of being able to start/stop/restart easily.

Really stupid question - but what's a runlevel?

Thanks,

Rob

It's a configuration, a list of services running. You can have many runlevels in your system (plus special ones for reboot, for example), so different configurations you can switch between. You can see a list in /etc/inittab (comments at the beginning of the file).

Ok, so I see there's a startup script for Apache in '/etc/init.d/rc3.d' called 'S02httpd', would 'rc3.d' be right right place to put a startup script for thttpd? What is the difference between the runlevels?

Thanks,

Rob

The script in /etc/init.d/rc3.d is probably just a symlink to one in /etc/rc.d/init.d. Directories like rc3.d are places where runlevel configuration is kept. 3 means it's runlevel 3. If you use that runlevel and wish to run thttpd on it, copy/symlink your starting script. To see your current runlevel run 'runlevel' command.
What's the difference between runlevels? Browse /etc/init.d/rc2.d, rc3.d etc. You should see different sets of scripts. That's the difference. The services started at boot at a certain runlevel. I may add that you can completely reconfigure them to suit your needs.

Thanks Mara.

So, would this do as a template for the runtime script? It says it's for Solaris but I assume the syntax is the same:

http://www.tech-recipes.com/solaris_...n_tips148.html

Yes, but replace /usr/iplanet/webserver/https-www.tech-recipes.com/start stop etc. with the actual commands to start/stop your daemon.

Now you're just mocking me No worries, I can take it from here. Thanks again for your help guys.