chkconfig has spoiled me?
 

Anyone know about the "chkconfig" utility that comes on my red hat box?

Well, I'm quite accustomed to using it to enable/disable services on startup.

But, I have to setup a server with SuSE 7.0, and it doesn't appear to have this utility. So, what can I do?

For example, if I want to enable httpd, smbd, or sshd on startup, normally I would do a chkconfig command. How would I accomplish this task without chkconfig?

I think all that chkconfig does is add and remove symlinks in the "/etc/rc.d" subdirectories.

Maybe you can install "chkconfig" on your Suse system.

I found that if there is no utility to stop/start services I am using command line alone, as follows
/etc/init.d/service start
/etc/init.d/service stop
Substitute service for lpd, portmap, etc.

Well, I just deleted the "S" file in the runlevel that I'm in, and now that service doesn't start anymore.

The only problem is if I want it to start again, it's gone, and I'd have to create a new symlink, which I'm not sure I want to be playing around with on a regular basis.

I'm not sure if the service I was concerned about has a /etc/init.d/service stop/start ability. (The service is identd, which I wanted to shut off since it keeps a port open).

The init scripts will only be started if they begin with "S", right? Instead of deleting them, rename the ones you want to disable by prepending a letter (say, "D" for disabled) to the beginning of the script's name. If you want to enable it at a later date, just remove the letter.

I'm not certain of this but I believe SuSE uses YAST to control services.

S for start, K for kill, usually 'SNNservice' and 'KNNservice' where NN is a number from 00 to 99 - that controls the order in which the services are started or stopped when you switch runlevels.