Watchdog timer and auto-starting a shell script?

[juergen]

I have just turned a Kindle PW3 into a calendar dashboard. Many thanks to this forum, and to NiLuJe in particular, for providing the amazing tools which have enabled this project, and sharing the expertise how to use them!

The dashboard is intended for an aging relative, to help them keep on top of appointments. It grabs data from a Google calendar (to be maintained remotely by someone else) and displays the current time and date, what's up today, plus further upcoming events if there is room left on the screen.

With the Kindle waking up every minute to update the time display, I am worried about memory leaks or other glitches which could cause the software to run off the rails. The dashboard should operate for months without maintenance (powered from a wall wart, of course). I can't expect the user to reboot it and manually restart the script via KUAL.

Is there an established solution for (a) a watchdog timer, or regular nightly reboot timer, and (b) auto-starting a shell script upon booting? I could try and cobble something together, but this looks like an area where I could easily shoot myself in the foot. Hence, thanks in advance for any pointers to a proven solution!