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

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.