Start a program at system startup

[nomadoro]

Hi, guys!
How to start a program at system startup? Just add a line in some system configuration file? Or is there a way other than this?

[gerard4143]

try googling "Linux configure your sessions"...Hope this helps or try this link

Configuring Sessions (GNOME 2.2 Desktop on Linux User Guide) - Sun Microsystems

[clickit]

Would using "cron" help? Probably could initiate from .bashrc too.

[wje_lf]

How to start a program at system startup?

try googling "Linux configure your sessions.

No, he's interested in doing something at system startup, not when he starts a session.

Would using "cron" help?

No, he's interested in doing something at system startup, not at a particular point in clock time.

Probably could initiate from .bashrc

No, he's interested in doing something at system startup, not when he fires up a new bash shell.

The answer depends on your particular Linux distribution. Linux distributions have various ways of organizing their startup files.

For example, in Slackware (which is what I run), you'd probably want to place your startup code in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, but if the desired program is to be run continuously, even while the rest of the system is running, make sure you have an amperstand at the end of the line:

asdf asdf qwerty &

or the initialization won't continue until the program is finished. Nobody likes his system to take an infinite time to boot up.

Also, since the program will be running at system startup, it will be run before anyone logs in. This means that it will run as root, and won't have most of the normal environment variables set, such as a home directory.

Consult the documentation for your particular distribution. Maybe, if you say in this thread which distribution you're using, someone will come along and say which file you should modify.

Hope this helps.

[nomadoro]

I still cannot figure out. I'm using Ubuntu. Can anyone help?

[wje_lf]

Yeah, my wife runs Ubuntu. The file in question is

/etc/rc.d

If you use vi, you need to do this:

sudo vi /etc/rc.d

If whatever you put in there is something which could run a long time, so you don't want to wait for it to finish before continuing the boot process, be sure to put the ampersand (&) at the end of the command, or you system might not make it all the way up. It might just be running your program forever.

[wje_lf]

Oops! My bad! Not /etc/rc.d, but /etc/rc.local

Sorry for the confusion. :(

[nomadoro]

I made it. The original mistake is that I forgot to write the full path name in rc.local. Thanks!