How to register our own custom services to be initiated at known init level??

mayank_a · 10-02-2005, 02:23 PM

I need to create a system service whenever system starts it start by itself, without the need of anyone logging in.
Default initlevel is 5.
How to do it?? how to bring in perview of ntsysv menu??

Regards
Mayank

acid_kewpie · 10-02-2005, 02:59 PM

init scripts change a lot between different distro, so it depends on which one you are running, but there's certainly no concept of registering at all. what you'd do is firstly create your own init scrip tin /etc/rc.d/init.d (paths vary slightly of course..) which will respond to stop, start, restart args as normal ones do. that should be all you need ot have it listed in ntsysv or such like. normally you can just copy a simple script that already exists in there.

jschiwal · 10-02-2005, 08:21 PM

If you look in the /etc/init.d directory, there will probably be a README file. There may also be a file named "skeleton". Take a look at those. There may also be some man-pages you can read through.

You may have the "chkconfig" program on your system. It can be used to install a service and determine the runlevels. This program examines and modifies a header in the program to determine which runlevels the program should run as.

For example, on my laptop, here is part of the beginning of /etc/init.d/pcmcia:

Code:

#! /bin/bash
# Copyright (c) 1996-2004 SuSE Linux AG, Germany.  All rights reserved.
#
# Author: Hubert Mantel <mantel@suse.de>, 1996
#         Christian Zoz <zoz@suse.de>, 2000
#         Joachim Gleissner <jg@suse.de>, 2004
#
# /etc/init.d/pcmcia
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:       pcmcia
# Required-Start: $local_fs
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Start: coldplug
# Required-Stop:
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:  2 3 5
# Default-Stop:
# Description:    Loads pcmcia base modules and starts cardmgr
### END INIT INFO

Not all systems use this style of starting services. Even if your distro does, you will want to read the documentation that comes with your system.

For example, there may be man-pages for "init", "chkconfig", and even for items such as "inittab" and "init.d". Consider printing out the man-pages.
I use the command "man -t <topic> | kghostview -" to read manpages. This produces a postscript version (much better looking). You could print it out the man-page from the ghostscript viewer program, or by issuing the command,
"man -t <topic> | lpr" which pipes the output to the printer.

Good Luck.