You can manually start an Adaptive Server and Backup server using the startserver command. I find this useful during troubleshooting efforts because I can watch the initialization output in real-time. Here's the syntax.
Starts only the Adaptive Server
# startserver -f RUN_ESOFTHUB_SVR
Starts both the Adaptive and Backup servers
# startserver -f RUN_ESOFTHUB_SVR -f RUN_SYB_BACKUP
Starts only the Backup Server
# startserver -f RUN_SYB_BACKUP
If you want to shutdown the dataserver, go to this post:
Shutdown DBMS (Sybase)