How can I ensure that my custom written C application runs at startup?

Question

I have written a command line C application that I need to run every time the system starts up. How would I go about doing this? I have seen other questions and answers that show ways to do this for pre-installed software via visual menus but this is just a custom written binary that I need to make sure runs after every reboot. Is there any way I can do this, or must I write a shell script that runs the binary and find a way to add that to the scripts that get run at startup? I am running on 10.04.

Answer 1

Assuming this can run at the very end of the boot process, you can either just include it in /etc/rc.local or use the special cron @reboot parameter and put it in the user or system (root) crontab, depending on the privileges it needs.

Answer 2

There are couple of ways. All based on what permission you require,

Easiest one is as follows,

The following is tutorial for - Open startup applications from the power cog

Click on ADD

Then provide the details,

Answer 3

If you want to execute something each time you are logged in you have to modify your local

~/.profile 

If you want to execute something each time you start a login shell you can modify your

~/.bashrc

In you case you have to add your executable to .profile and drop a new line for it, remember to add a & at the end to run this application as a separate process.

Something like

/usr/bin/gedit &