Manage with upstart

Here's a sample config for upstart to manage eye running as a specific user (deploy in my case):

description 'Eye'

start on (local-filesystems and runlevel [2345])
stop on runlevel [016]

setuid deploy

expect fork

script
  # Eye runs from $HOME, upstart with setuid wont set $HOME
  export HOME=/home/deploy

  exec eye load /path/to/config.eye
end script

respawn

If you use a user other than deploy, just change the setuid line to match your user's name as well as the export HOME line.

rbenv

If your processes depend on rbenv for using the right version of Ruby, you'll need to add the rbenv shims directory to the path.

Before the exec line within the script block, add the following, updating your path to rbenv if it's installed elsewhere:

script
  ...
 export PATH=/usr/local/rbenv/shims:$PATH
 ...
 exec ...
end script

Environment Variables

If you use environment variables to hold things like API keys that will be needed by your processes, you'll need to either define them in the upstart config (see export) or the eye config.

If you define them in /etc/environment, you can source that file in your script block, then export the variables so they are available to your processes.

script
  ...
  . /etc/environment
  export RAILS_ENV
  export SOME_API_KEY
  ...
  exec ...
end script

Note: If /etc/environment defines PATH and you're modifying the path in you script block, make sure to do your modifications after you source /etc/environment, otherwise the PATH defined in /etc/environment will overwrite your modifications.