"/etc/init.d/ejabberd start" doesn't start ejabberd

I'm using ejabberd 17.04 installed with the binary installer in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

I tried to follow the instructions for configuring ejabberd to run on boot:

On a *nix system, if you want ejabberd to be started as daemon at boot time, copy ejabberd.init from the ’bin’ directory to something like /etc/init.d/ejabberd (depending on your distribution). Create a system user called ejabberd, give it write access to the directories database/ and logs/, and set that as home; the script will start the server with that user. Then you can call /etc/inid.d/ejabberd start as root to start the server.

I used the following commands:

fyi, ejabberd is installed to /home/ubuntu/ejabberd-17.04/

I don't really know what is meant by "set that as home" in the instructions.

Then when I try sudo /etc/init.d/ejabberd start
It just says: "Starting ejabberd..." but nothing happens.
Nothing is written to ejabberd-1704/logs and there are no error messages in the terminal, so I really can't tell what is going on.

Did I do this incorrectly? Are there any further steps I can take to debug this?

For now, I'm just starting it manually using the shortcut on the desktop or by calling ejabberdctl.