I have an application that needs to be automatically started after system restart. How do I add the application as a system service?

Thanks in advance,
Sophia

What distro are you using, the location of the startup script you need to edit are distribution dependent. If you were on slackware then you would edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local but yours may well be in a different place.

Post your distro and I'm positive someone will be able to tell you the file.

HTH

Jamie...

The distro is RedHat.

Thanks,
Sophia

ok, RH. It depends on if an app needs starting at a specific time, or it just needs starting.

If it just needs starting, add it to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local ,else if it needs starting at a specific point, like after networking comes up, but before some other app starts, its best to use good ol SYSV stylee, which startfiles are located at /etc/rc.d/init.d and then linked to the runlevel u want it to start in, say runlevel 3, then its linked to /etc/rc.d/rc3.d.
It needs a proper executable startscript which is easy to make. Save this script (no indentation, I know that sux0rz) as the name of the daemon to start, Ill call it myApp for now, and make it executable by root:

|---cut_here--->
#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/myApp
CONFIG=/etc/myApp.conf
XPARMS="-d -v"
case "$1" in
start)
daemon $DAEMON $CONFIG $XPARMS
touch /var/lock/subsys/myApp
echo "myApp started"
;;
stop
killproc myApp
rm -f /var/lock/subsys/myApp
echo "myApp stopped"
;;
status)
status myApp
reload|restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "myApp [start|stop|reload|restart|status]"
exit 1
esac
<---cut_here---|

now decide on the runlevels and the sequence number u want it to start as. in each runlevel the capital K denotes services that are stopped on entering the runlevel, and the S marks services that are started, in order 1-99.

Now we'll (soft/force)link it to start in runlevel 3 as the 10th entry:
ln -sf /etc/rc.d/init.d/myApp /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S10myApp

Now we'll (soft/force)link it to stop properly in runlevels 0 and 6 (halt and reboot level as the 1th entry:
ln -sf /etc/rc.d/init.d/myApp /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K01myApp
ln -sf /etc/rc.d/init.d/myApp /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K01myApp

Done.
Start it manually as "/etc/rc.d/init.d/myApp start" or watch it come up on reboot in the runlevel.

HTH