Automatic startup on system boot

Once you have Zotonic running, you want to make sure that it automatically starts up when the server reboots, so that the website keeps running after a power failure, for example.

Creating an init script

The Zotonic shell command can start Zotonic in the background and stop it again.

An init script will just need to call the zotonic command with either start or stop. On debian systems it might look like this:

#!/bin/sh -e

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             zotonic
# Required-Start:       $local_fs $remote_fs $network $time postgresql
# Required-Stop:        $local_fs $remote_fs $network $time postgresql
# Should-Start:
# Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
# Short-Description:    Zotonic
### END INIT INFO

# Set any environment variables here, e.g.:
#export ZOTONIC_IP="127.0.0.1"

/usr/bin/sudo -u zotonic -i /home/zotonic/zotonic/bin/zotonic $@

For other environment variables which can be set, see Useful environment variables.