Run my application on startup?

[brambos]

Noob alert ahead.

I am developing an application that will run on a headless Raspberry Pi2 (no monitor, no mouse, no keyboard). To get a good bootup time I want to use Arch linux instead of the standard Raspbian distro.

I'd like to know what is the proper way to automatically start my application on bootup (I will only need ALSA to run, no network, no internet, no video)?

Second question: is it harmful for Arch Linux when I shut down by cutting the power (i.e. will it corrupt the system)? I won't have a screen/keyboard so shutting down properly will be difficult...

Thanks!

[WarheadsSE]

yanking power on any installation with a rw rootfs is bad.

[brambos]

Ah ok.. I see how that could be bad in theory. But Raspberry Pies are very often used this way (as standalone internet radios, media players etc.) so I reckon there must be a way of making it relatively safe to do (or perhaps only with Raspbian?).

[WarheadsSE]

It isn't safe even with Raspbian. Some people are just foolhardy.

[moonman]

Install all the required software and make your rootfs ro, mount var and home in tmpfs , change journald storage to none and you can unplug the hell out of it the only concern here is available ram and you may need to write tempfiles to recreate directories in var on boot.

[brambos]

That's excellent! Thanks for the pointers!