Back in the old days, when I needed to run a script upon boot, I could always put it into the /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Apparently all this changed with Fedora Core 14. Fedora Core being my Operating System of choice. The file in question is nowhere to be found.

Granted, this hasn't been an issue, until my gateway decided to quit.

systemd

systemd is the new initialisation system used since Fedora Core 14. It replaces the System V style system of an init process that serially starts all daemons and the like.

We can use "systemctl" and "systemctl status" to display what services started and which failed.

The command "systemctl enable [service]" will enable the service upon startup. It does nothing more, as far as I can tell, than create a symbolic link in the appropriate directory. For example "ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/glassfish3.service' '/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/glassfish3.service'".

MySQL Server Script

A MySQL Server systemd service script in Fedora Core 18 is available here.

Installing mysqld on startup of the system is not automatically done in Fedora Core 18. ^[3]

The old way

Run "/etc/init.d/mysqld start". Use "restart" after an update. What should also work is "service mysqld start".
Run "chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on" to enable the mysql-server on startup.

The new way

Run "systemctl start mysqld.service" to start mysql-server. Use "restart" after an update.
Run "systemctl enable mysqld.service" to enable the mysql-server on startup.

rc.local is back!

Systemd comes automatically with an rc-local.service, It is installed without being enabled. It is available at /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service.

Here are my steps:

1. create file /etc/rc.d/rc.local (add, for instance, two lines "#!/bin/sh" and "echo Profit!")
2. run "chmod u+x /etc/rc.d/rc.local"
3. run "systemctl enable rc-local.service"
4. run "systemctl start rc-local.service"

The command "systemctl status rc-local.service" should show:

Note

Systemd is in control on which deamons are started when, in what order, etc. This means that forking of your daemon is a bad idea, as it means systemd willl lose control of the process. For example, the process id is no longer known.

References

[1] systemd

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd

[2] systemd for Administrators, Part 1

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd-for-admins-1.html

[3] Install MySQL 5.5.30 on Fedora 18/17, CentOS/Red Hat (RHEL) 6.3/5.9

http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2010/install-mysql-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel/

[4] System does not run /etc/rc.local

http://superuser.com/questions/278396/systemd-does-not-run-etc-rc-local