Home / ubuntu / Questions / 9382
Accepted
Ricardo Reyes
Asked: 2010-10-26 05:46:01 +0800 CST

How can I configure a service to run at startup

  • 772

I have a daemon that runs fine if I start it manually with the service command:

ricardo@ricardo-laptop:~$ sudo service minidlna start                   
 * Starting minidlna minidlna                                                              [ OK ]

but it's not configured to auto start when the PC reboots.

How can I configure it to start automatically, even if no one is logged into the PC?

autostart services

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    sudo update-rc.d minidlna defaults

    This should add the service to the automatic startup system. But if you get:

    System start/stop links for /etc/init.d/minidlna already exist.

    Do the command

    sudo update-rc.d minidlna enable

    P.S.: For further detail look at the man page for update-rc.d by typing the command man update-rc.d

    • 330

    • To start a daemon at startup:

      update-rc.d service_name defaults

    • To remove:

      update-rc.d -f service_name remove

    defaults => default run levels 2,3,4 and 5

    Example:

    update-rc.d tomcat7 defaults
    • 48

  3. Since Ubuntu 15.10 and newer (resp. Debian 8 "jessie" and newer), you have to use the following command to configure your service minidlna to run at startup:

    sudo systemctl enable minidlna.service

    And to disable it again from starting at boot time:

    sudo systemctl disable minidlna.service

    This works with all service names available on your system. To find out available service names, just list the filenames of the service files:

    ls /lib/systemd/system/*.service
ls /etc/systemd/system/*.service
    • 45

  4. Sometimes you need to run a script on boot process, for example run an iptables config at boot process. So you don’t have to run the script manually every rebooting.

    You can run your script on boot process in Ubuntu by adding it to /etc/init.d/rc.local file. Look the steps below.

    1. Open /etc/rc.local file with this command:

      vim /etc/rc.local

    2. Add your script that you want to run on boot process there, for example:

      sh /home/ivan/iptables.sh 
echo 'Iptable Configured!'

    3. Review the comments included in that file and make sure an exit 0 is at the end.

    4. Save the files. And your script will run on boot process.

    • 40

  5. In ubuntu version 18.04 TLS, I found that update-rc.d does not work fine if there is no specific comment block in the start script that looks like this:

    ### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: myprogram
# Required-Start: $ local_fs $ remote_fs $ syslog $ network $ time
# Required-Stop: $ local_fs $ remote_fs $ syslog $ network
# Default-start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: myprogram some description
### END INIT INFO
    • 3