Which user script to use to start a daemon at boot-up?

[chetstone]

I want to start shell2http which I installed with entware. I thought services-start would be a good place to start it. I can see in the logs that services-start runs at boot, but it either has an error which is not reported or the service starts and does not keep running. If I run /jffs/scripts/services-start from the command line after boot it does start up and stay running. What is the recommended way to do this?

Here is my services-start script:
```
#!/bin/sh
logger -t "services-start" -c "XXXX" -p user.notice

shell2http -port XXXX /wifioff /jffs/scripts/w0.sh /wifion /jffs/scripts/w1.sh&

```
And here is the log entry showing the script runs at boot:
```
May 4 23:05:26 dropbear[2686]: Running in background
May 4 23:05:26 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/services-start
May 4 23:05:26 services-start: XXXX
May 4 23:05:26 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/wan-event (args: 0 init)
May 4 23:05:26 wan-event: WAN0, eventType=init
```


And here is me logging in and seeing shell2http is not running, then starting it by hand:
```
ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AX86U_PRO 3004.388.5_0 Sat Dec 2 17:49:53 UTC 2023
admin@RT-AX86U_Pro-85B8:/tmp/home/root# ps |grep shell
491 admin 0 SW [kbdmf_shell]
4816 admin 5972 D grep shell
admin@RT-AX86U_Pro-85B8:/tmp/home/root# /jffs/scripts/services-start
admin@RT-AX86U_Pro-85B8:/tmp/home/root# 2024/09/05 12:48:07 register: /wifion (/jffs/scripts/w1.sh)
2024/09/05 12:48:07 register: /wifioff (/jffs/scripts/w0.sh)
2024/09/05 12:48:07 register: / (index page)
2024/09/05 12:48:07 listen http://localhost:XXXX/

admin@RT-AX86U_Pro-85B8:/tmp/home/root# ps |grep shell
491 admin 0 SW [kbdmf_shell]
5227 admin 1200m S shell2http -port XXXX /wifioff /jffs/scripts/w0.sh /wifion /jffs/sc
5264 admin 5972 S grep shell
```

 

[ColinTaylor]

I don't know anything about shell2http but Entware services would normally be started and stopped by putting an "S script" in /opt/etc/init.d.

 

[lgkahn]

my guess is that is too early to start it up and keep it running.. i had to start something in whatever script is run on mounting an ssd previosly as that is much later.

 

[chetstone]

@ColinTaylor thanks for the reminder about the S* scripts. I found this with more info. Unfortunately I ran into the same problem. The process still dies somewhere before the boot finishes.

@Igkahn, if you mean the post-mount script, that won’t work either because that is the script that initializes entware and runs the S* scripts.

Apparently others have had this problem. Last year I worked with @MissingTwins to document his zerotier installation. (https://github.com/MissingTwins/merlin_zerotier). He must have had a very difficult time getting that going, because his startup scripts are very complicated. He has two S* scripts, and a cron entry that runs them every minute after wan-start. And then another Cron entry that periodically checks and corrects the crontab if it has gotten corrupted!!

So since I have zerotier installed, I’ve decided to just piggyback on that and add my (simpler) S* script to his cron stuff. That should keep things running. So far so good.

Thank you both for your help.