Removing / Stopping Unwanted Services from Linux boot

The first thing you should do when you install a shiny new gnu/Linux system is remove unwanted services from default runlevel (default is runlevel 2 incase of debian and related distros ).

Most advanced users would manually remove the syslinks from the runlevel /etc/rc{0-6}.d directories. This is not only messy and also prone to errors. I advise you to look the update-rc.d tool from the sysv-rc package. The sysv-rc package is installed as part of standard gnu Debian Linux base system, so it pays to learn this one over other GUI or Ncurses based tools.

Alright enough of talk let me go ahead remove some unwanted services, let's get rid the The Internet Superserver(inetd) here.

$ sudo update-rc.d -f inetd remove update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/inetd exists during rc.d purge (continuing) Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/inetd ... /etc/rc0.d/K20inetd /etc/rc1.d/K20inetd /etc/rc2.d/S20inetd /etc/rc3.d/S20inetd /etc/rc4.d/S20inetd /etc/rc5.d/S20inetd /etc/rc6.d/K20inetd

The name of the service 'inetd' (referred to as basename in manual pages) are the init scripts that reside in the /etc/init.d directory. Have a look the scripts in this directory or look closely the boot time messages to find likely targets to remove.