Arch Linux

CaspianXI

Member

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 59

Starrting apps as "services"

I have an application which I like to leave running in the background. I want it to start when I first boot up and when I resume from suspend/hibernate. This app isn't one of the services in /etc/rc.d (if it was, I'd just addit to my DAEMONS in my rc.conf).

Is there any way to treat this app as a daemon so that I can add it to rc.conf? Or, would it be better to edit startup/resume scripts? (I'm really not sure where these scripts are located, though)

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

There are a couple ways you can go about this:

1) If the app is an archlinux package, and it's one most people would likely want to have in the background as a service or daemon, then contact the package maintainer - it should have an /etc/rc.d entry, and the packager should probably add one.
2) If the app is self-compiled, or self-packaged, you can make your own /etc/rc.d script, based off one already existing, to run your app.
3) If you don't want to go to all that trouble, you can just edit /etc/rc.local and add

/path/to/my/service &

CaspianXI

Member

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 59

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

Thanks, Cerebral.

This is actually a home-cooked app that I'm using, so there's no package maintainer for me to contact (other than myself ).

I'll try to make a rc.d entry -- if it doesn't work out, I'll use the /etc/rc.local file.

Thanks!

loserMcloser

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2004-12-15

Posts: 130

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

I'll try to make a rc.d entry

Shouldn't be too hard to get it working. Just copy one of the existing rc.d files that looks similar to what you want to do and modify it.

CaspianXI

Member

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 59

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

I successfully made a rc.d. entry, and it seems to be working so far. As long as smoke and flames don't start coming from my computer, I think everything is working fine.

Thanks .

kamagurka

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2006-02-20

Posts: 150

Website

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

What I do to have console apps work somewhat daemon-like (in that they run in the background) is that I start them in a screen session. I do this with irssi and rtorrent, for example.

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I always roll 20s on my disbelieve checks.
You better believe it.

ezzetabi

Member

Registered: 2006-08-27

Posts: 947

Re: Starrting apps as "services"

and for X apps I use xmove.