hello hello. Nearly all of my linux experience has been with Redhat/Fedora/CentOS. Recently I setup a new soho server with Ubuntu Server LTS. I find myself already missing some of the useful redhat features like
chkconfig, or the ability to type service "service-name" restart. /etc/init.d/"service-name" restart just seems like such a pain once you've become accustomed to the redhat way of doing things.

I was wondering if Ubuntu (err Debian) based server distros have any cool tricks or functions that make them unique or a little easier to use/administer. For example, without chkconfig --list, how can I figure out what services are enabled on start up? How do I go about enabling and disabling start up services?

Keep in mind that I don't have a gui installed so I'm looking for some useful command line tools here.

Thanks!

For services, I like sysv-rc-conf. The default interface is pretty simple, but there is more power hidden.

The biggest advantage for me of debian based has always been the package management. Granted, I don't do anything fancy and can stick with pure Debian Stable branch for my needs... But I've had seemless dist-upgrades on the server from Debian 3.0 to 3.1 to 4.0 with almost no hassle (my desktop had a few things I had to rework).

dpkg-reconfigure is a powerful command also for reconfiguring installed packages. Mostly I use it on my desktop for fixing X.

And how can I forget module-assistant!

Here's a debian cheat sheet. Most of these features should also be in Ubuntu.

Very nice! I noticed that sysv-rc-conf wasn't installed by default but I quickly added it with apt-get. That's going to be a huge help because as I've already mentioned, I don't really like messing directly with the init scripts. :P

Thanks for your help - I'm def going to check out the cheat sheet you provided.

Cheers!

Just one more note, in Debian at least, aptitude is the preferred package management tool nowadays since it has superior dependency conflict handling. You can use it from the command line same as apt-get. Just do aptitude install instead. There's a couple of minor differences in the options. Aptitude also has an ncurses type text interface, but I've never really gotten the hang of it...