How I should run my Golang process in background?

Question

This question is not strictly programming related, but for sure important for programmers.

I wrote a simple smtp server, when I run it from console all is fine, except i

Answer 1

There are already good answers but I will add some additional information.

You do not need to install additional software such as supervisord on Debian to take care of backgrounding the process.

Debian comes with a tool called start-stop-daemon which is a standard way for starting daemons in init.d scripts. It can also also put the process in background for you if the program does not do it on its own. Have a look at the --background option.

Use /etc/init.d/skeleton as the basis of your init script, but change the do_start() function as follows:

start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --make-pidfile \
    --background --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
            || return 1
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --make-pidfile \
    --background --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_ARGS \
            || return 2

I also added the --make-pidfile option which creates the PID file for you.

In case you need to switch to a different user in a secure way, there is also --chuid option.

On Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS/SL 6.X the simplest way is to write an upstart job configuration file. Just put exec /usr/sbin/yourprogram in the /etc/init/yourprogram.conf configuration file. With upstart there is no need to force the program in background. Do not add expect fork or expect daemon which you need with traditional daemons. With upstart it is better if the process does not fork.