Starting a non-root daemon a minute or so after boot-up?

[Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com>]

I'm looking for a way to start a non-root daemon a minute or so after
boot-up.  I tried the following (see the end of this message), but the
program didn't start, and I didn't get a log file with any error
indications.

I'm sure that I can figure out a variation of the code below that would
work, but instead of making use of some sort of hack, I'd rather use a
utility that's designed for this purpose, if such a thing exists.

The 'fcron' program looked promising, since it's able to measure time
relative to its own startup.  However, I can't figure out how to
configure fcron to run a program once and only once.

Here's what I previous tried, which didn't work ...

- Create a file called 'localstart' in /etc/init.d.

- Make sure this file is executable, owned by root, etc.

- Make a symlink to this file from S00localstart in /etc/rc{2,3,4,5}.d

- Here are the contents of /etc/init.d/localstart, which for some
  yet-to-be-determined reason didn't work:

  #!/bin/sh

  case "${1}" in
  start)
    {
      /bin/sleep 120
      /bin/su theuser -c \
         "/usr/bin/fetchmail -s -f /home/theuser/etc/fetchmailrc"
    } >>/var/log/localstart 2>&1 &
    ;;
  esac

Like I mentioned, I'm quite able to debug the code above and eventually
to get it to work.  But I'm hoping I can find a utility that might allow
me to do this in a more elegant way.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com