Don't know how to setup MonaServer as a daemon on Ubuntu

[Bert Hrothgar]

Hi! I've successfully installed MonaServer on a VPS running Ubuntu 15.04, but I seem unable to run it as a daemon in the background. sudo ./MonaServer --daemon [--pidfile=/var/run/MonaServer.pid] doesn't do anything, and the service file from this topic always ends in Failed to start mona.service: Unit mona.service failed to load: No such file or directory. Am I doing something wrong, or is there another way to run MonaServer in the background without having to manually start it every time? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[KawaiiWoIf]

Not sure how you'd do it in ubuntu specifically but for my Debian server I made up a script in /etc/init.d and registered it via update-rc.d. Directions would be similar to https://www.debian-administration.org/article/28/Making_scripts_run_at_boot_time_with_Debian

#!/bin/sh
# init script for MonaServer

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          mona
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# X-Interactive:     true
# Short-Description: mona rtmp server
# Description:       Start the rtmp server and associated helpers
### END INIT INFO

case "$1" in
 start)
  cd /usr/src/MonaServer/MonaServer
  echo "Starting MonaServer"
  ./MonaServer --daemon
 ;;
 stop)
  pkill MonaServer
  echo "Stopping MonaServer"
  ;;
 *)
  echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/mona {start|stop|restart}"
  exit 1
  ;;
esac

exit 0

It's not the most comprehensive script but it'll start up when the server does and I can start/stop it with "/etc/init.d/mona stop", etc.. Good luck on Ubuntu !

[Bert Hrothgar]

Thanks for your suggestion! I couldn't adopt your script and method directly, probably because Ubuntu 15.04 uses systemd instead of upstart, but after using your script as a base, with some trial and error (and a lot of swearing) I managed to get it working. For anyone else having a similar problem, I've placed the following script named as mona somewhere first:

#! /bin/sh

start() {
 cd /usr/MonaServer/MonaServer

 echo "Starting MonaServer"
 ./MonaServer --daemon
}

stop() {

 pkill MonaServer
 echo "Stopping MonaServer"
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    restart)
        stop
        sleep 1
        start
        ;;
    *) exit 1
esac

Then I created the following file called mona.service in /etc/systemd/system :

[Unit]
Description=MonaServer

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=<directory of script>mona start
ExecStop=<directory of script>mona stop
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

After that, I enabled the service with:

systemctl enable mona.service

And of course you can manually start/stop/restart the service with:

systemctl start/stop/restart mona

[Thomas Jammet]

Great job!

You can also try this service file without the mona script :

[Unit]
Description=MonaServer service

[Service]
Type=forking
WorkingDirectory=/home/user/MonaServer/MonaServer
ExecStart=/home/user/MonaServer/MonaServer/MonaServer --daemon
Restart=on-abort

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

For me it works well on Fedora, that's the simplest way I've found.

Regards