Recommendation to run in the background under linux?

[Erik Morton]

Any recommendations for a good way to run the server as a background  
process under linux? I realize I can detach the ftpd.sh script and  
pipe IO to /dev/null, but I couldn't find the pid file, if any, that  
it wrote, which would make stopping the server a little harder.

I haven't developed real java apps in years so I apologize if this is  
a stupid question. Thanks in advance.

Erik