http:// qmail.jms1.net / daemontools / upstart.shtml

Issues with daemontools and upstart

upstart is an "init" replacement system used by Fedora 9 and later, and optionally by several other Linux distributions. It works with the same "/etc/rcn.d" scripts that init uses, but it doesn't use the /etc/inittab file at all.

The daemontools install script looks for an "/etc/inittab" file, and if it finds it, adds a line to the end so that the normal system boot procedure will start svscan. upstart has this file, but doesn't use it. This means that daemontools does not start automatically when these systems boot up.

Instead of using /etc/inittab, the upstart system uses files in the "/etc/event.d" directory to define systems which need to stat when the system boots. To make daemontools boot automatically, we need to create a file in this directory which tells upstart how and when to start it. We will call this file /etc/event.d/daemontools.

This file is NOT a script- it's just a text file which upstart reads and uses when deciding what processes to start when the system boots up.

The contents of this file should be...

# daemontools start on runlevel 2 start on runlevel 3 start on runlevel 4 start on runlevel 5 stop on shutdown respawn exec /command/svscanboot

After creating this file, you can use this command to start it, or you can reboot the machine (however this isn't Windows, which means it's not normal to have to reboot just because you installed a program.)

# initctl start daemontools

Note...

I don't generally use upstart myself. All of my own servers run CentOS (which still uses "init") or Mac OS X (which uses "launchd", which is another replacement for "init".) This means I haven't had a chance to actually test these directions for myself yet. However, I've seen the same information on several other web pages, so I can only assume it works.

2009-12-19 I have just installed Fedora 12 on a netbook, and these directions do seem to be working.