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Wow. I am the author of a popular app-that-runs-as-a-daemon and I just went through a HUGE debate with some folks about whether or not my package should auto-s

Wow. I am the author of a popular app-that-runs-as-a-daemon and I just went through a HUGE debate with some folks about whether or not my package should auto-start on boot by default. I eventually settled on this: If you're using Upstart you get auto-start by default. For everything else you'll have to turn on auto-start at boot via whatever mechanism is normal for your distribution. That means for Ubuntu you get auto-start on boot the moment you install the package. For Debian you'll use update-rc.d and for RHEL-based distros you'll use chkconfig. I have no idea if I made the right decision though since there's no standard. Sometimes it annoys the hell out of me that a package configures itself to start at boot and other times I wish it did auto-configure itself to start at boot. It all depends on the package and what I want the server to do (primarily).

stormbrew 13y ago
One of the nice things about upstart is that it helps this situation out a lot. Disabling a service before you install the package is as simple as creating a /etc/init/servicename.override file with "manual" in it. Unlike some other solutions (like placing a full configuration file before install) this doesn't trigger a conflict with the package installation. The thing is that for a desktop user, starting the service is fine. A lot of the time it's what you want. And that's Ubuntu's main raison d'etre. Also note that autostarting when installing is different from autostarting when booting. It's the former that I find frustrating, not so much the latter. Generally speaking, I have plenty of opportunity to tweak the boot behaviour between installing and rebooting (assuming the server ever reboots at all).