PHP Script as Daemon in Debian - php

Question

I can't seem to find anything that does this exactly, and I've spent 2 hours on google trying to find a solution and I'm simply fed up. I'm sure it's a simple solution but I can't seem to find it.
I need to run a .php file located in /var/www/Game/Sockets/ChatServer.php as a Daemon. This file acts as a Socket Server for my chat system in my browser based game. However despite trying many different things, I can't get it to start on boot. I can use "service ChatServerDaemon start" to start the daemon, but on boot it doesn't work. The file I have located in init.d is:
#! /bin/sh
# Installation
# - Move this to /etc/init.d/myservice
# - chmod +x this
#
# Starting and stopping
# - Start: `service myservice start` or `/etc/init.d/myservice start`
# - Stop: `service myservice stop` or `/etc/init.d/myservice stop`
#ref http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/94-start-stop-daemon,-Gearman-and-a- little-PHP.html
#ref http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/85033/use-start-stop-daemon-for-a-php- server/85570#85570
#ref http://serverfault.com/questions/229759/launching-a-php-daemon-from-an-lsb-init- script-w-start-stop-daemon
NAME=ChatServerDaemon
DESC="Chat Server Daemon for Taloren."
PIDFILE="/var/run/${NAME}.pid"
LOGFILE="/var/log/${NAME}.log"
DAEMON="/usr/bin/php"
DAEMON_OPTS="/var/www/Game/Sockets/ChatServer.php"
START_OPTS="--start --background --make-pidfile --pidfile ${PIDFILE} --exec ${DAEMON} ${DAEMON_OPTS}"
STOP_OPTS="--stop --pidfile ${PIDFILE}"
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
set -e
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting ${DESC}: "
start-stop-daemon $START_OPTS >> $LOGFILE
echo "$NAME."
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon $STOP_OPTS
echo "$NAME."
rm -f $PIDFILE
;;
restart|force-reload)
echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon $STOP_OPTS
sleep 1
start-stop-daemon $START_OPTS >> $LOGFILE
echo "$NAME."
;;
*)
N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
I'm pissed off and tired of trying to get this to work. Please can someone help me with this. I'm sorry if the answer is obvious. :/

Answer 1

Simply placing the script in /etc/init.d/ is not sufficient to make it run at boot. One needs to specify at which runlevels the system should start or stop the service. On distributions that use classic SysV init system it is done by making symbolic links to the init script in special folders.
Here is who to determine the current run level:
$ who -r
run-level 2 Apr 9 10:39 last=S
For example, here is how the cups printing service was configured in order to be started in runlevel 2:
$ ls -l /etc/rc2.d/S20cups
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Apr 6 01:24 /etc/rc2.d/S20cups -> ../init.d/cups
Everything that has to be started or stopped in run level 2 has a symbolic in /etc/rc2.d/, the symlinks' name start with S when the service must be started and K when the service has to be stopped, then there is a two digit priority.
It may be cumbersome to handle this by hand, so major distributions have tools to do this automatically. On Debian or Ubuntu it's update-rc.d. On RedHat it is chkconfig.
Also this SysV init system is being replaced by systemd (which still supports SysV init scripts). So it may be worth writing directly a configuration file for systemd. Or you can use an alternative service manager like supervisord or god. They're a lot easier to manage and they have nice features, like automatically restarting services when they fail.