Making It Turn-Key

I l @ ve RuBoard

As you're cleaning things up, you also should make sure that the application starts up automatically if the server reboots. This is a relatively straightforward operation under UNIX: You just create a series of files in /etc/init.d and link them to the appropriate /etc/rc.d directories; and things will just start up when init is run. Testing them is a different matter because the only real test is to reboot the machine. Don't assume that things will work without doing this test. For example, the Tomcat startup.sh requires JAVA_HOME to be set. If that is set in your environment, it will work fine when you invoke the init.d script from the shell. However, it will fail if it's not in the script or if it is set by root's environment.

Under Windows, things are quite a bit trickier. All the details have been hidden under the hood, and getting things to start automatically takes some effort.

If you're running a version of Windows that understands services (NT, 2000, or XP), most of the things that need to run automatically can be configured as services. If you're running 95 or 98, you'll need to put files into your Startup taskbar folder.

I l @ ve RuBoard