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

In Lubuntu I had to deal with the opposite situation. Skype start running after booting and I found in ~/.config/autostart/ the file skypeforlinux.desktop. The content of the file is as follows:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Skype for Linux
Comment=Skype Internet Telephony
Exec=/usr/bin/skypeforlinux
Icon=skypeforlinux
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Deleting this file helped me.

Answer 2

Many answers on starting something at boot, but often you want to start it just a little later, because your script depends on e.g. networking. Use at to just add this delay, e.g.:

at now + 1 min -f /path/yourscript

You may add this in /etc/rc.local, but also in cron like:

# crontab -e
@reboot at now + 1 min -f /path/yourscript

Isn't it fun to combine cron and at? Info is in the man page man at.

As for the comments that @reboot may not be widely supported, just try it. I found out that /etc/rc.local has become obsolete on distros that support systemd, such as ubuntu and raspbian.

Answer 3

You can do it :

chmod +x PATH_TO_YOUR_SCRIPT/start_my_app 

then use this command

update-rc.d start_my_app defaults 100

Please see this page on Cyberciti.

Answer 4

• Add your script to /etc/init.d/ directory
• Update your rc run-levels: $ update-rc.d myScript.sh defaults NN where NN is the order in which it should be executed. 99 for example will mean it would be run after 98 and before 100.

Answer 5

Create your own /init executable

This is not what you want, but it is fun!

Just pick an arbitrary executable file, even a shell script, and boot the kernel with the command line parameter:

init=/path/to/myinit

Towards the end of boot, the Linux kernel runs the first userspace executable at the given path.

Several projects provide popular init executables used by major distros, e.g. systemd, and in most distros init will fork a bunch of processes used in normal system operation.

But we can hijack /init it to run our own minimal scripts to better understand our system.

Here is a minimal reproducible setup: https://github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat/tree/f96d4d55c9caa7c0862991025e1291c48c33e3d9/README.md#custom-init

Answer 6

The absolute easiest method if all you want to run is a simple script, (or anything) is if you have a gui to use system > preferences then startup apps.

just browse to the script you want and there you go. (make script executable)