https://askubuntu.com/questions/99232/how-to-make-a-jar-file-run-on-startup-and-when-you-log-out

Here’s a easy way to do that using SysVInit. Instructions:

1. Create the start and the stop script of your application. Put it on some directory, in our example is:
   • Start Script: /usr/local/bin/myapp-start.sh
   • Stop Script: /usr/local/bin/myapp-stop.sh

   Each one will provide the instructions to run/stop the app. For instance the myapp-start.shcontent can be as simple as the following:

   #!/bin/bash
   
   java -jar myapp.jar 

   For the stop script it can be something like this:

   #!/bin/bash
   # Grabs and kill a process from the pidlist that has the word myapp
   
   pid=`ps aux | grep myapp | awk '{print $2}'`
   kill -9 $pid

2. Create the following script (myscript) and put it on /etc/init.d.

   /etc/init.d/myscript content:

   #!/bin/bash
   # MyApp
   #
   # description: bla bla
   
   case $1 in
       start)
           /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/myapp-start.sh
       ;;
       stop)
           /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/myapp-stop.sh
       ;;
       restart)
           /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/myapp-stop.sh
           /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/myapp-start.sh
       ;;
   esac
   exit 0

3. Put the script to start with the system (using SysV). Just run the following command (as root):

   update-rc.d myscript defaults 

PS: I know that Upstart is great and bla bla, but I preffer the old SysV init system.