i'm working on a little project with some friends where we are creating an arcade mechine with games we have designed ourselves, and we want to be able to boot our instillation directly into the program we have written to select the games. we're all a bunch of linux newbies so we're very lost.

the solution we think might be best:

because the default run level fopr debian is 2 we figured we can go into rc2.d make a link to a shell in init.d that runs our java gui instead of loading gdm. but we have no idea how to do this. we've only heard scraps about how it can be done. please i'll accept any sort of help including on-line manuals.

thanks all of you for reading the post and for your help in advance.

You got it right on the ball. That's how you create startup scripts. So, create your script in /etc/init.d/my_start_script_goes_here. Next, create a sym link to it. This is how:

ln -s /etc/init.d/my_start_script_goes_here /etc/rc2.d/S98my_start_script_goes_here.

Obviously, you can change mystartscript to whatever name you choose.

-twantrd

Have a read of 'man update-rc.d' it explains it all pretty well

thanks for the confirmation. now my follow up question.

how do i activate a java program via this shell script? we want to skip loading gdm and just have out java program run after the mechine boots. whats a good doc i can use to figure out how to run it? just a small tutorial or a bit of assistance would be greatly appreciated.

You never mentioned if your java program required the use of X (which would be helpful next time) so I will give you both ways (with and without X) to get your computer to boot straight into your java program. I do the same thing for my mythtv box.

First you want to login as normal user so your program isn't running as root. To automate this you need to:
apt-get install mingetty
vim /etc/inittab

Find the line:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1

And replace it with:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty -l USERNAME tty1
(replace USERNAME with the user want to be logged in as)

Now everytime your computer boots you will be logged in as USERNAME.

If you need X to start up place the following in your ~/.profile: (if it doesn't exist create it)
Otherwise place the line to run your java program in that file.

If X is being started then you need to edit your ~/.xinitrc and place the line to start your java program in that file. Now whenever you boot up you should be logged in with your java program running. HTH