Start script on boot

[manoelfd]

Hello,

I have a VPS running Fedora..

I run a game server and to start the server I exec an .sh file:

cd /home/game
sh server.sh

Is there a way to have it start automatically on boot in case the server is restarted?

Thanks

[Irithori]

In case you still have an older fedora (<15) with SysVinit, this page should help
Packaging:SysVInitScript - FedoraProject

For fedora 15/16, SysVInitscripts can be used, but a better approach is to write a native systemd initscript
freedesktop.org - Software/systemd


Also:
The clean way would be to package the game server -including its libs, documentation, config, init scripts into an rpm,
because then there are no unmanaged bits and pieces lying around on the server.
How to create an RPM package - FedoraProject

[manoelfd]

Thanks, but I'm kinda new to Linux and those pages seem a bit complicated. Is there a simple way to make the server exec the .sh file on boot?

BTW, I'm on Fedora 14.

[Irithori]

Well, there is the file /etc/rc.local which will be executed after all other initscripts.
You could place your commands here, and probably prefix them with a "su", if that game server runs with another user than root (it should)

Other than that: A sysvinitscript is not that complicted. Just well documented
Look at the template and read the description. Then it should become clear.

[atreyu]

You might want to run it in screen, it is run in the background and allows you to reconnect to it later to send commands to it, monitor, restart it. etc.

First make your script executable:

chmod +x /home/game/server.sh

then run your script in a screen:

screen -S GameScreen -dm "/home/game/server.sh"

you can see running screens with:

screen -ls

then attach to a running screen by taking the PID from the above command with:

screen -r $PID

Initialization scripts for Fedora 14 (and previous versions) are pretty straight forward. You basically need:
1. chkconfig and description lines
2. start() and stop() functions that control starting / stopping your prog
3. case statement that processes required command line args

here's a crude example:

#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig: 35 10 90
# description: blah

# source function library
. /etc/init.d/functions

start() {
  action $"Starting blah: " /bin/your/prog
}

stop() {
  action $"Stopping blah: " kill -9 $(pidof yourprog)
}

case $1 in
  start) start ;;
  stop) stop ;;
  restart) stop; sleep 1; start ;;
  *)
    echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
esac

Then put it in the /etc/init.d/ directory, (e.g. /etc/init.d/myscript).

Make it executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/myscript

Then run chkconfig on it to add the runlevels defined at the top of the script (3 and 5 in this case):

chkconfig --add myscript

Now that script will run in runlevels 3 and 5 upon reboot.