• Use chkconfig — about, link
• DaemonController library. It will enable you to auto-start services with your Rails app, starting them if they aren’t already started.
•  Create an initializer containing (about):

Thread.new do
  system("rackup faye.ru -s thin -E production")
end

• On Ubuntu, you should use the operating systems’s init system — Upstart.

  user@host:~$ cat /etc/init/faye.conf 
  description "Faye Upstart script"
  
  start on startup
  stop on shutdown
  
  respawn
  
  script
      env RAILS_ENV=production
  
      exec sudo -u deployuser -i /home/deployuser/.rbenv/versions/1.9.2-p290/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/bin/rackup /var/www/booko.com.au/booko/faye.ru -s thin -E production
  end script 

  I’m not happy with the method of calling Ruby since it will change. But the advantages are that it will start when the system starts and it will respawn if it dies or you KILL it.

  Let Upstart take care of demonising a process and making sure it keeps running

• Shell script in config/thin_example.sh

  #!/bin/sh
  
  set -e
  
  # Feel free to change any of the following variables for your app:
  TIMEOUT=${TIMEOUT-60}
  APP_ROOT=/home/deployer/apps/example/current
  PID=$APP_ROOT/tmp/pids/thin.pid
  CMD="cd $APP_ROOT; bundle exec rackup -D -P $PID $APP_ROOT/config/faye.ru -s thin -E     production"
  AS_USER=deployer
  set -u
  
  startme(){
      run "$CMD"}
  
  stopme(){
      run "pkill -f $PID"}
  
  run (){if["$(id -un)"="$AS_USER"];then
      eval $1
    else
      su -c "$1"- $AS_USER
    fi
  }case"$1"in
      start)   startme ;;
      stop)    stopme ;;    
      restart) stopme; startme ;;*) echo "usage: $0 start|stop|restart">&2
         exit 1;;
  esac

  Loosely modified from the unicorn scripts that Ryan Bates used in his VPS deployment railscast (pro only).

  Make it executable

  chmod +x config/thin_example.sh

  You’ll need to symlink it to init.d (after chmod +x ‘ing to make it executable)

  sudo ln -nfs /home/deployer/apps/example/current/config/thin_example.sh /etc/init.d/thin_example

  Then if you want it to startup with the server

   sudo update-rc.d thin_example defaults

  Otherwise you should just be able to /etc/init.d/thin_example [start|stop|restart]. An important point to note is that I’m telling rackup to start in daemon mode (-D) and explicitly setting the PID so I can kill it late