Best way to write an init.d script for start_server and starman?

Question

I'm trying to come up with a nice init.d script that starts a psgi app, using start_server and starman. It needs to have the following features:

• Run on RedHat (i.e. Debian's start-stop-daemon is not available)
• Run start_server as another user
• Be maintainable.

Ideally, I'd like to use the stuff that comes with /etc/init.d/functions to give the script the look and feel of any ol' RedHat init.d script.

More specifically, I'm looking for best practices to:

• Daemonize a program that doesn't come with its own --daemonize option
• Run the daemon under another UID.

Answer 1

You could try runit, it's another supervisor. Nowdays it seems a good practice to use one of these things. Here you could read a comparison of different supervisors.

Best practices:

• Daemonize a program that doesn't come with its own --daemonize option

You don't have to daemonize the program, runit takes care of it.

• Run the daemon under another UID.

Here you could use chpst