I am relatively new to Debian, and would like to know how to disable certain services, such as Network Manager and Bittorrent tracker, from automatically starting at system boot. I am used to Slackware, where you just removed executable permissions in the /etc/rc.d directory, which is obviously different in Debian. I see that, during bootup, scripts are being executed from a /scripts directory, however this directory does not seem to appear in the root directory. Thanks.

All services are supposed to be started by the files found in the /etc/rc?.d/ directories with the /etc/rc2.d/ directory being the default run level the others (3,4 and 5) are configured identically, these files then have a symbolic link to the corresponding files in the /etc/init.d/ directory. If you wish for a service not to start by default then you can rename/remove it from the /etc/rc2.d directory and your change will be preserved on package upgrade as long as one of the start links still appear in one of the other (3,4 and 5) directories. Or you can use the update-rc.d command to change the link(s) and if you want to start the service after then you can use /etc/init.d/service_name start if you leave the start off the end it will give you the options that can be used like stop, restart, reload ...

For the other part of your question about the programs starting from some /scripts directory there is something weird going on that I have never seen happen on my system unless you mean the /etc/init.d directory which is a normal place for this to happen in. I think I would check to see if somehow your box has been taken over as I don't know of any bittorrent client that starts automatically on boot so that is a little suspicious and it definitely should not be getting started from some /scripts directory on a Debian system.

I don't believe that there has been any malicious programs installed on this system, since it is just a new install and that it has not been connected to the network yet. I don't have the exact information displayed at boot-up, but the message displayed does indicate that there is something running from a /scripts directory somewhere.

Well then not much chance of it at all, I think we will need to see the exact message to be able to tell you what is going on.

Another way to control startup services is to install sysv-rc-conf (aptitude install sysv-rc-conf or apt-get install sysv-rc-conf) and then run it. You can then check or uncheck services by runlevel. It's a slightly more automated way of controlling services (that is, you don't have to rename anything by hand, just run along a simple ncurses display checking and unchecking to your heart's content).

the bittorrent service appears to be part of a default install of etch. It's on all my boxes and I never specifically installed it.

sysv-rc-conf is easy enough to use to disable it though. no clue why it's enabled by default.

Bittorrent is popular enough that it's now part of the default set of programs/services built into the Gnome desktop environment. If you installed the Desktop environment choice during the installation of Etch, it's built into that. (I agree that it's a larger question why Gnome and or Debian made that choice, but at least that might tell you when/how it got installed on your system.)

The exact messages I see at boot are the following:

Again, being relatively new to Debian, I'm not sure where these are being called from.

Well, the first thing to do is figure out which scripts are called. Post the contents of the /etc/rc2.d directory. The easiest way is to use the ls command. Open a terminal, become root with su and enter your root-password. Then, doThis tells the ls command to name all files (the a option) and list the permissions and in this case, to where the link leads too (the l option). It then re-directs that output not to your screen, but to a file (the > re-directs and you name the file, in this case rc2.txt). You'll find that text file in the current directory, so you can view it withSubstitute cat with gedit if you want something more graphical When you post the contents of the text file, use the code tags (like I did above) to distinguish between the output of a command and your reply.

Apparently it is a combination of udev and initramfs involved in it from an apt-file search on your output.

This thread tells a bit more about those scripts..

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=230672

Yes, it is installed but it is, in my experience, turned off by default. Check /etc/default/bittorrent

Kent