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 the file you put in /etc/init.d/ you have to set it executable with:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/start_my_app

Thanks to @meetamit, if this does not run you have to create a symlink to /etc/rc.d/

ln -s /etc/init.d/start_my_app /etc/rc.d/

Please note that on latest Debian, this will not work as your script have to be LSB compliant (provide, at least, the following actions: start, stop, restart, force-reload, and status): https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts

As a note, you should put the absolute path of your script instead of a relative one, it may solves unexpected issues:

/var/myscripts/start_my_app

And don't forget to add on top of that file:

#!/bin/sh