Python Daemon Packaging Best Practices

Question

I have a tool which I have written in python and generally should be run as a daemon. What are the best practices for packaging this tool for distribution, particularly how sho

Answer 1

The best tool I found for helping with init.d scripts is "start-stop-daemon". It will run any application, monitor run/pid files, create them when necessary, provide ways to stop the daemon, set process user/group ids, and can even background your process.

For example, this is a script which can start/stop a wsgi server:

#! /bin/bash

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo "Starting server"

    # Activate the virtual environment
    . /home/ali/wer-gcms/g-env/bin/activate

    # Run start-stop-daemon, the $DAEMON variable contains the path to the
    # application to run
    start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile $WSGI_PIDFILE \
        --user www-data --group www-data \
        --chuid www-data \
        --exec "$DAEMON"
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping WSGI Application"

    # Start-stop daemon can also stop the application by sending sig 15
    # (configurable) to the process id contained in the run/pid file
    start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $WSGI_PIDFILE --verbose
    ;;
  *)
    # Refuse to do other stuff
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/wsgi-application.sh {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit 0

You can also see there an example of how to use it with a virtualenv, which I would always recommend.