Creating service starting script

One of our customer ask what to do to start IsoStar server during system start. Our customer was using Centos (RedHat derivative) so I suggested to use the command line tool called chkconfig [1, 2]. TO use this tool you need a special script starting Isostar Apache server. The sample of such script can be found here [3]. Here is the example instruction. Let me assume that isostar is going to /opt directory.

1. Copy the script from link [3] to your HDD and call it isostar_server
2. Change line:

   /path/to/command/to/start/new-service

   to:

   /opt/csd/isostar/APACHE/bin/ccdc_apache start

   and line:

   /path/to/command/to/stop/new-service

   to:

   /opt/csd/isostar/APACHE/bin/ccdc_apache stop

3. Remove following lines (from both start and stop subsection):

         #Or to run it as some other user:
   /bin/su - username -c /path/to/command/to/start/new-service
   echo "."

4. Change 'new-service' in 'echo -n' lines to 'isostar_server'.
5. Now as a root copy isostar_server file into /etc/init.d/
6. Again as a root invoke chkconfig and add isostar_server: /sbin/chkconfig --add isostar_server

There are very similar tool for Debian (Ubuntu etc.) called update-rc.d [4, 5]. You should be able to use following command with the same (very similar script): update-rc.d isostar_server start 90 2 3 4 5 . stop 10 0 1 6.

Links

[1] http://linux.die.net/man/8/chkconfig
[2] http://spiralbound.net/2006/11/15/controlling-services-with-chkconfig
[3] http://spiralbound.net/2007/07/23/example-linux-init-script
[4] http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Update-rc.d
[5] http://www.annodex.net/cgi-bin/man/man2html?update-rc.d+8