How to run a shell script at startup

Question

On an Amazon S3 Linux instance, I have two scripts called start_my_app and stop_my_app which start and stop forever (which in turn runs my

Answer 1

A simple approach is to add a line in /etc/rc.local :

/PATH/TO/MY_APP &

or if you want to run the command as a special user :

su - USER_FOOBAR -c /PATH/TO/MY_APP &

(the trailing ampersand backgrounds the process and allows the rc.local to continue executing)

If you want a full init script, debian distro have a template file, so :

cp /etc/init.d/skeleton /etc/init.d/your_app

and adapt it a bit.