Ubuntu – Best way to start a program at boot on Ubuntu Server

Ok, I've been working on this for a while, and I finally got it working.

I ended up using the new Ubuntu "upstart" service. It's a replacement for the /etc/init.d system.

Here's how it worked for me:

I put a file in /etc/event.d that describes my process:

description "node.js comet server"
author      "Chris"

start on startup
stop on shutdown
exec /usr/local/bin/node /path/to/comet.js > /dev/null &
respawn

Then I restarted, and it worked! Much better and easier than writing /etc/init.d scripts!

The easiest way would be to put:

/server/apache/bin/apachectl start

into "/etc/rc.local". The better way to do it would be to create an /etc/init/apache.conf upstart script, I believe the correct values would be something along the lines of:

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]
expect daemon
exec /server/apache/bin/apachectl start
pre-stop exec /server/apache/bin/apachectl stop

Then run "initctl start apache" to start it and "initctl stop apache" to stop it. For more information on upstart configuration files like the above, see "man 5 init".