Making apps start at boot

Sometimes you install an application which doesn't configure itself to automatically start and stop with the OS.

To make it start you need to do two things.

Firstly, we need to make a symlink to the app in /etc/init.d

ln -s /usr/local/myapp/bin/myapp /etc/init.d/myapp

Secondly, we need to update the system startup and shutdown scripts using update-rc.d

update-rc.d myapp start 20 2 3 4 5 . stop 20 0 1 6 . 

You should see the following output.

Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/myapp ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc1.d/K20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc6.d/K20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc2.d/S20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc3.d/S20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc4.d/S20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp
   /etc/rc5.d/S20myapp -> ../init.d/myapp

The numbers in the update-rc command correspond to the start/stop position of the app during the boot process and the run levels to apply the command to.

To remove them again type

update-rc.d -f myapp remove