Question

I want to create to deploy a heartbeat service (a python script) as a service using Upstart.

My understanding is that I’ve to add a /etc/init/myheartbeatservice.conf with the following contents.

# my heartbeat service 

description     "Heartbeat monitor"

start on startup
stop on shutdown

script
    exec /path/to/my/python/script.py
end script 

My script starts another service process and the monitors the processes and sends heartbeat to an outside server regularly. Are startup and shutdown the correct events ?
Also my script create a new thread. I’m assuming I also need to add fork daemon to my conf file?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Upstart only sets a handful of environment variables. Does your application need any of these set?

See this answer to a similar question: Need help running Python app as service in Ubuntu with Upstart