[olug] services

[Mark A. Martin]

I would like to suggest an alternative to something that Daniel said. 
The usual way to keep a particular facility from starting when entering
a particular run-level is to change the uppercase "S" at the beginning
of the name of the symbolic link to a lowercase "s" rather than removing
the link altogether.  If you never start a facility, you probably don't
want to try to stop that facility when you shutdown either (although it
won't hurt anything).  So you should also rename the corresponding kill
link, if there is one (possibly in /etc/rc.d/rc0.d), so that its name
starts with a lowercase "k" rather than an uppercase "K".  You should
only do this if there is a kill link for the facility in directory for
the same run level you are modifying or if you have turned the facility
off in all run-levels.  This approach allows you to preserve the links,
in case you change your mind and decide that you want the facility to
start in a given run-level after all, and is a record that lets you know
what should (or could) start (and/or stop) in a given run-level.

For example, if I don't want the font server xfs to start in run-level
5, I will change the name of /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S90xfs to
/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/s90xfs.  There is no corresponding kill link in rc5.d
and the font server on my system still starts in run-levels 2, 3, and 4
so I would not rename the kill links in rc0.d, rc1.d, and rc6.d.  This
allows the font server to cleanly stop if I shut down from run-level 2,
3, or 4.

If I never wanted the font server to start, I would rename the start
links

/etc/rc.d/rc2.d/S90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc4.d/S90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S90xfs

to

/etc/rc.d/rc2.d/s90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc3.d/s90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc4.d/s90xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/s90xfs

and rename the kill links

/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K10xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K10xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K10xfs

to

/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/k10xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc1.d/k10xfs
/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/k10xfs.

When making these kinds of changes, keep the purposes of the different
run-levels in mind.  From the comment at the beginning of /etc/inittab,
the meanings of the different run-levels are

#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have
networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)

See a good systems administration reference such as "Essential Systems
Administration" by AEleen Frisch, O'Reilly and Associates, for further
details of System V initialization.
-- 
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Mark A. Martin					Dept of Applied Mathematics
http://www.amath.washington.edu/~mmartin	University of Washington
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