Run Python script on startup

Question

Running on Ubuntu Karmic. I need to execute the following (updated) script at boot time

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/scripts
# Description: Starts Python scripts
# ————————————————–
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: Scripts
# Required-Start: $network $local_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Description: Start Python scripts to provide mapping services
### END INIT INFO

case $1 in
  start)
    # echo -n ¨Starting Mapping service: ¨
/usr/local/bin/liteserv.py /home/myUN/bin/mapnik/my_osm.xml --caching --debug=False
;;
  stop)
# echo -n ¨Stoping Mapping service: ¨
/usr/local/bin/liteserv.py /home/myUN/bin/mapnik/my_osm.xml --caching --debug=False
;;
  restart)
# echo -n ¨Retarting Mapping service: ¨
/usr/local/bin/liteserv.py /home/myUN/bin/mapnik/my_osm.xml --caching --debug=False
;;
  *)
# echo ¨Usage: scripts {start|stop|restart}¨
exit 1
esac

Have placed it into /etc/init.d Registered it with

sudo update-rc.d scripts defaults

But nothing happens on boot. I have tried looking in the logs but I can't find anything. Both scripts and liteserv.py are marked as executable.

As per Andy Smith's response, When I run:

/etc/init.d/scripts start  

I now get the program running correctly (after correcting the bad quotes).
However, it still does not run the program on bootup.

Answer 1

This is bizarre, but unless it is something that Stack Exchange is doing, I think the problem you are having is that you are using "fancy quotes" rather than "".

Whatever editor you are using may have replaced the standard quote character(Unicode U+0022) with stylized open and close quotes (U+201C and U+201D). sh doesn't like this very much. When I replace these stylized quotes with "normal quotes" your code works fine (with the small exception that I don't have the .py file it calls).

Answer 2

You can add your stuff to /etc/rc.local.

Otherwise, you could place your script into /etc/init.d/, chmod +x it and then run update-rc.d FOO defaults.

Answer 3

Your script indicates it wants to be started in runlevels 3 and 5, stopped in runlevels 1 and 2 (plus 0 and 6 which are shutdown and reboot), and no opinion in runlevel 4. Ubuntu boots to runlevel 2 by default (I think this is still true with Upstart). So unless you set a different default runlevel your script won't run. In the script headers, use

# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6

Answer 4

By adding:

exec > /tmp/debug-my-script.txt 2>&1  

at the beginning of the scripts file I was able to at least trap the error messages that was coming from the Python program (an authentication error with postgres). So the script is running at boot time (after much community input). It just fails during the run (which is a different problem).