Quickie /etc/init.d script to get a daemon running.

bitlbee.sh

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          bitlbee
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:      
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Run Bitlbee IRC server/IM gateway.
### END INIT INFO

EXE=/usr/local/sbin/bitlbee
NAME=bitlbee
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
PIDARG="-P "   # Must end with a space if it is required
ARGS=""

PATH=/sbin:/bin

. /lib/init/vars.sh
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

do_start () {
    $EXE $PIDARG$PIDFILE $ARGS
    echo "$NAME running (pid=$(cat $PIDFILE))"
}

do_stop () {
    echo "Trying to kill $NAME (pid=$(cat $PIDFILE))"
    kill $(cat $PIDFILE)
}

case "$1" in
  start)
		do_start
		;;
  stop)
		do_stop
		;;
  restart) 
		do_stop
		sleep 5
		do_start
        ;;
  reload|force-reload)
        echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $NAME [start|stop|restart]" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
esac

At least on Ubuntu, daemons are moving towards initctl(8) for daemon process management. But sometimes it is just easy to whip up a quick script to start your daemon. This is the script I use. It is configured for Bitlbee but the script has been designed to be easy to modify. You should only need to edit data in the first 16 lines (if you don't know what it does, don't touch it).

The only tricky part is that the script does not add a space between the PIDFILE and the PIDARG command line switch to pass the PIDFILE in. This is so the script can handle new-style arguments such as --pidfile= as well as old-style arguments such as -P. If you need to use an old-style argument, be sure that PIDFILE ends with a space.