The Joy of Upstart

Upstart is a ridiculously easy way to turn your scripts into daemons. Take this python script:

/home/myuser/ez_daemon.py:

exec python /home/myuser/ez_daemon.py


And that&#8217;s it!
<ul>
<li>sudo start ez_daemon</li>
<li>sudo tail -f /var/log/upstart/ez_daemon.log</li>
<li>sudo stop ez_daemon</li>
</ul>
You can do this for any program, and it&#8217;s how Ubuntu and Fedora start most daemons.
Here&#8217;s a more complete example:
author "Graham King <graham@gkgk.org>"
description "uwsgi server for example.com"

start on (static-network-up and started mysql)
stop on shutdown

console log
respawn
respawn limit 10 5

setuid www-data
setgid www-data

env PYTHONPATH=/srv/example/src/example/

exec /srv/example/bin/uwsgi \
--virtualenv=/srv/example/ \
--module=example.django_wsgi  \
--http=127.0.0.1:8001

Each line is called a stanza, and they are documented in the Upstart cookbook.
It’s clear, it’s easy, and it works. And that makes me happy.