Disabling startup (init.d) services in Ubuntu

Ubuntu never has made obvious what the "Ubuntu way" of removing services from System-V run levels is. The GUI tools in GNOME and KDE are incomplete, and a quick investigation of the run level directories shows that they are filled automatically -- so that symlinks added and removed manually might, in the future, get ignored.

Fortunately, the README in /etc/init.d ends with the following advice:

Use the update-rc.d command to create symbolic links in the /etc/rc?.d
as appropriate. See that man page for more details.

The man page lists the following forms for invoking upgrade-rc.d:                                                        


      update-rc.d [-n] [-f] B name  remove


       update-rc.d [-n] B name  defaults [NN | SS KK]


       update-rc.d  [-n]  name  start|stop  R  NN runlevel  [ runlevel ]... 


       update-rc.d [-n] B name  disable|enable [ S|2|3|4|5 ]

The following command will remove the service collectd from all run levels:


bash$ sudo update-rc.d collectd disable
update-rc.d: warning: collectd start runlevel arguments (none) do not match LSB Default-Start values (2 3 4 5)
update-rc.d: warning: collectd stop runlevel arguments (none) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
 Disabling system startup links for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
 Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K95collectd
   /etc/rc1.d/K95collectd
   /etc/rc2.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc3.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc4.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc5.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc6.d/K95collectd
 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc1.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc6.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc2.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc3.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc4.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc5.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd

The command to remove a service from a specific runlevel should be the following:


sudo update-rc.d BASENAME disable `runlevel | cut -d ' ' -f 2`

...however a quick experiment shows that the runlevel argument is ignored:

bash$ sudo update-rc.d collectd disable 2

sudo update-rc.d collectd disable 2
update-rc.d: warning: collectd start runlevel arguments (none) do not match LSB Default-Start values (2 3 4 5)
update-rc.d: warning: collectd stop runlevel arguments (none) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
 Disabling system startup links for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
 Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K95collectd
   /etc/rc1.d/K95collectd
   /etc/rc2.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc3.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc4.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc5.d/S95collectd
   /etc/rc6.d/K95collectd
 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/collectd ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc1.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc6.d/K95collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc2.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc3.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd
   /etc/rc4.d/K05collectd -> ../init.d/collectd