How to make a program/process a service under SysV-style init?

Question

I wonder how can I make a regular application like for instance noip2 updater a system process. I use Debian 6.0.2. For now I have it like this :

• the binary is in the /usr/local/bin/ as noip2 file
• the 'script' that launches is added to /etc/rc.local

How can I make it a system service to be able to run/stop it with e.g. service command ?

Solution

From what I found, noip2 includes the script /etc/init.d/noip2, (also here, for those not running Debian right now) which should already be all you need. I'm not sure how services interacts with the scripts in /etc/init.d, but in general you could run

/etc/init.d/noip2 start

to start the noip2 service and

/etc/init.d/noip2 stop

to stop it. Have a look at the script, it shows how to wrap any such process into a system service (with a pidfile, for example) using start-stop-daemon.

Comments

[Admin]

You should probably tell us (Unix and Linux users) what makes something a "service", and what the "service" command does. I have only a vague idea how that relates to the Unix/Linux idea of a "daemon process".

[Patryk]

Thanks for the reply. As I see noip is not available for squeeze link

[sr_]

Indeed, it has been removed and there is no maintainer. (See also this bug report.) Probably time to (a) take over maintaining the package or (b) look for an alternative.