To start up Earthworm automatically on a unix machine boot, you can put it in the /etc/init.d scripts.

Here's an example from a Linux box:

We've got our Earthworm directories set like this:

> /opt/earthworm/earthworm_7.3
> /opt/earthworm/active_ew <- this is a link to the above; always the active EW version
> /opt/earthworm/run_working/params
> /opt/earthworm/run_working/logs

The contents of /etc/init.d/earthworm is:

    #!/bin/sh
    #This is the earthworm software start up script
    EW=/opt/earthworm
    EW_PARAMS=/opt/earthworm/run_working/params
    export EW_PARAMS
    case "$1" in
            start)
                    if [ ! -f $EW/start_earthworm.sh ]
                    then
                            echo "earthworm startup: cannot find start script start_earthworm.sh"  > $EW/run_working/logs/start_earthworm.log 2>&1 &
                            exit
                    fi
                    su rtem -c $EW/start_earthworm.sh > $EW/run_working/logs/start_earthworm.log 2>&1 &
                    ;;
            stop)
                    su rtem -c $EW/active_ew/bin/pau
                    ;;
            restart)
                    $0 stop
                    $0 start
                    ;;
            *)
                    echo "usage: start " # stop|start|restart"
                    ;;
    esac

We've got this symlink:
/etc/rc3.d/S99earthworm -> /etc/init.d/earthworm

The contents of /opt/earthworm/start_earthworm.sh is:

    #!/bin/bash
    # Start up earthworm in background
    cd /opt/earthworm/active_ew
    source /opt/earthworm/run_working/params/ew_linux.bash
    startstop >& /opt/earthworm/run_working/logs/startstop &