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In 10.10 upstart is being used instead of sysvinit.

It's possible to remove annoying upstart services which you do not want by removing the appropriate file in /etc/init/blah.conf

However, this seems a heavy handed approach. How do you correctly configure upstart to be able to selectively turn these services on and off via the command line?

As a practical example, the answers listed here to turn gdm off using rcconf no longer work: How do I prevent GDM from running at boot on Ubuntu?

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Nb. Apparently some versions of ubuntu have a 'services' item in the menu of the graphical desktop that allows this to be configured. That is not present on mine. I'm specifically looking for a command line solution. – Doug Apr 3 '11 at 13:08
The most updated answer is on askubuntu. Read the comments too! – Marcello Nuccio Aug 20 '11 at 17:07
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This is now documented in the paragraph Disabling a Job from Automatically Starting. – Marcello Nuccio Aug 20 '11 at 17:14
@Marcello Hm... was there a point to saying that? The 'most updated answer' is still the same answer. remove the file or delete the first few lines of it manually. – Doug Aug 22 '11 at 3:56
the newest solution is echo manual >> /etc/init/<service>.override, and this is mentioned only in the comments (and in the official documentation). I did not found it easily, that's why I mentioned it here. – Marcello Nuccio Aug 24 '11 at 6:05
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5 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

If you look in /etc/init.d you will notice that any services that are configured through upstart are just symbolic links to /lib/init/upstart so removing them from /etc/init.d just removes the link - not the script.

If you want an interface to this you can install the chkconfig package (apt-get install chkconfig) which gives a useful command line tool:

# chkconfig --list
acpi-support              0:off  1:off  2:on   3:on   4:on   5:on   6:off
acpid                     0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off
alsa-mixer-save           0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off
anacron                   0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off
apache2                   0:off  1:off  2:on   3:on   4:on   5:on   6:off
apparmor                  0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off  S:on 
apport                    0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off
atd                       0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off
.... and so on ....

You can enable / disable services for specific run-levels (or just turn them on and off) with:

# chkconfig -s <service> <state/runlevels>

for example:

# chkconfig -s gdm off

to turn it off completely,

# chkconfig -s gdm on

to turn it on with the defaultsm or

# chkconfig -s gdm 34

to only turn it on for run levels 3 and 4.

You'll usually find this command on RHEL based systems (CentOS, Fedora, etc).

UPDATE

This is specific to Ubuntu and gdm / kdm / whatever.

When gdm starts up it calls an upstart config file /etc/init/gdm.conf

This file then references /etc/X11/default-display-manager to see if it is the default display manager for the system - if it is then it starts.

The /etc/X11/default-display-manager just contains:

/usr/sbin/gdm

You can replace this with another display manager, or remove the file entirely and it won't start gdm.

A line from the /etc/init/gdm.conf file:

[ ! -f /etc/X11/default-display-manager -o "$(cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/sbin/gdm" ] || { stop; exit 0; }

It's saying "If the file /etc/X11/default-display-manager doesn't exist, or if it doesn't contain /usr/sbin/gdm then exit"

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That didn't work. Just like rcconf, chkconfig does not list gdm as a service to be started at any run level. Yet, restarting, it loads. chkconfig -s gdm off did not prevent it from starting. – Doug Apr 5 '11 at 4:26
There is a link here also suggesting that chkconfig is not the appropriate tool to use: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1559266 – Doug Apr 5 '11 at 4:35
I have never liked Ubuntu's startup - and Linux's in general. It has always seems so messy and kludgy. Give me FreeBSD's rcng any day. Anyway - specific to Ubuntu's display manager you have what my edit shows... – Majenko Apr 5 '11 at 8:58
+1 for correct after edit with details for upstart. – Doug Apr 27 '11 at 5:34
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up vote 2 down vote

I've always found the sysv-rc-conf tool very helpful, it has a very nice & easy to use interface.

install it like this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf

use it like this:

sudo sysv-rc-conf
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up vote 1 down vote

Upstart is an event-driven init manager, and runlevels are not the primary mechanism for deciding when a service starts. Instead, services are started when all their dependencies are satisfied, which allows greater parallelism during boot, speeding up the boot process.

Using Ubuntu 11.04, I was able to disable GDM by editing the /etc/init/gdm.conf file, and removing all of the "start on" entries. Here is my pre-edit:

start on (filesystem
          and started dbus
          and (drm-device-added card0 PRIMARY_DEVICE_FOR_DISPLAY=1
               or stopped udev-fallback-graphics))
stop on runlevel [016]

Here is my post-edit:

start on
stop on runlevel [016]
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Correct; however, this is basically no better than just moving/removing the etc/init/gdm.conf file; I'm (still) amazed that manually editing the config file seems to be the only way to do this. – Doug May 26 '11 at 1:16
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up vote 1 down vote

My recommendation would be to simply comment out all "start on" and "stop on" lines. That worked well for me when I ran "initctl show-config" to see if the automatic startup of my program I wanted was disabled.

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up vote 0 down vote

Here's a solution:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9416839&postcount=3

@Matt Jenkins

I have never liked Ubuntu's startup - and Linux's in general. It has always seems so messy >and kludgy. Give me FreeBSD's rcng any day. Anyway - specific to Ubuntu's display manager >you have what my edit shows...

Arch Linux has a nice init system. However, systemd blows any other init system out of the planet.

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