How to configure XAMPP to Start Automatically in OpenSUSE 11.3 with Gnome

First and foremost, I’d like to say I’ve been a Microsoft guy all my life. With that said, I am not so closed minded that I don’t realize that there are other solutions and technologies other than those supported by Microsoft. Recently I’ve been getting into the LAMP space for three main reasons. The first is that I had a need to generate income outside of my current job and far and away PHP is the big web technology for the customers I want to target. Secondly it’s free. Thirdly there seems to be a wealth of information about pretty much everything.

The other day I downloaded openSUSE 11.3 and the newest version of XAMPP to go ahead and kick off the learning process and boy was I surprised at how easy it was to get everything installed and up and running. Satisfied with my progress I turned my VM off and went off to dreamland.

The next morning I woke up, booted up my VM to start playing with my new toy, and realized that XAMPP was not running and actually needed to be started manually each time. This was not an acceptable for me so I went and found the solution to this problem via the XAMPP FAQ and a few other sites. Listed below are the steps in which I took.

1. Navigate to GNOME Terminal by clicking on Computer and then selecting More Applications. On the left hand side of the Application Browser, type in Gnome Terminal and then press enter. This will start gnome Terminal.
   
   
2. Within the command prompt type the following command line in to get your current runlevel, egrep :initdefault: /etc/inittab/. This will return your runlevel in the format id: (x) : initdefault: where (x) is your runlevel. In most cases this number should be either 3 or 5. Both runlevel’s represent multi-user modes the difference between the two is that a runlevel of 3 means that only console logins are being used while a runlevel of 5 means that you are leveraging the display manager.
   
   
3. Now that you have your run level, type the following within the command prompt: cd /etec/rc.d/rc(x).d where (x) is your runlevel from the previous step. Next create a symbolic link with the following entry, ln –s /opt/lampp/lampp /etc/inti.d/lamp
4. The final step is to activate the symbolic link that you just created. There are two ways in which you can do this, you can either use YaST or for the hardcore guys out there you can use the chkconfig command. Being that I’m a Linux newbie, I chose to do this with YaST. Open YaST by clicking the computer button and then selecting it from the menu on the right hand side of the computer pop up screen. If you are not logged on as a super user, you will be asked to provide credentials.
   
   
5. Within the YaST Control Center window type in run within the filter box and then press enter, this will start the Systems Services application.
   
   
6. Scroll down until you find the entry for lamp. Left click the entry and then click the enable button at the bottom of the system services Window.
   
   
7. Close out all YaST windows, YaST will save the configuration settings that you just made upon exit. Your XAMPP installation will now run automatically upon boot.