How to autostart Ubuntu headless server?

There must be people here who run their game servers on Ubuntu servers? How do you start the program when the server starts? I can run it with ./Servername.x86_64 but that's all I know about running programs in Linux. This method is not good because the server will not start if a reboot happens, also the program is tied to the SSH terminal window - if I close it the program closes with it.

Firewall configuration and overall server installation hardening was easy with guides but I'm having trouble with this one. I heard about this thing called upstart, is that what is used for this kind of thing?

 

I'm trying to run my server with upstart, but I get this error:

Got a SIGABRT while executing native code. This usually indicates
a fatal error in the mono runtime or one of the native libraries
used by your application.

Again, it runs fine if I cd to the directory and run ./Server.x86_64 but that same command does not work trough upstart.


My upstart script:

 

This time with /etc/init.d/ script. I have called sudo update-rc.d vcpr_server defaults but it wont start on boot. I can run it fine manually with: sudo /etc/init.d/vcpr_server

 

Can't help you with upstart, but for init.d scripts make sure they are linked to the appropriate runlevel. E.g. make a symbolic link to that file in whatever runlevel you want the server to be started, e.g.
ln -s /etc/init.d/vcpr_server /etc/rc2.d/S99vcpr_server

 

Thanks for response.

Unfortunately I already have the link in place, so that is not the problem.

 

Then I suppose it's because of the missing PATH or something ... I would suggest having it log the output (especially the error output) to a file.

 

Okay, I got it working. I'm so confused right now that I don't know what is going on, but here is how I start it now:

In /etc/rc.local I added this line:

It runs screen terminal multiplexer as a user and then in that screen session the starting script is run. exec bash makes sure that the screen session won't exit...

It is important to run as a user not as root, for some reason I get mono errors if run as root.

My run_server.sh is very simple:

 

Root doesn't get the same environment as a regular user, and upstart scripts don't get the same environment that you do when you just login via ssh either. So issues with programs not running the same under upstart are almost always something different about the environment. If you do something like the following example it should work fine.

I su to a different user, and use a shell script to actually run the program instead of starting it directly.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. description "game machine server"
3.  
4. start on runlevel [1234]
5. stop on shutdown
6. script
7.   chdir /home/gamemachine/app/current/server
8.   exec sudo -u gamemachine /home/gamemachine/app/current/server/bin/game_machine s
9. end script
10.  
11. respawn
12.