How do you set a program as a service in Linux (Debian) but have it switched off by default? When you install Alfresco, it gives you an option of having it installed as a service or not. If you install it as a service, the service starts up on booting but since it's using Tomcat it's too heavy to leave as a background program. In addition, it takes a lot longer to stop than Apache. Therefore, I would like to keep it as a service but have it set to off by default so all I need to do is type `sudo service alfresco start`. While I can leave it set-up not as a service and write a bash script or two, I'd like to learn more about how "services" work in Linux. Apache's not a problem but it would be nice to know where its service parameters are stored and how you can change these.

The 'general' approach would be


$ sudo update-rc.d -f servicename remove


to remove the _servicename_ from any runlevel to start automatically.

To re-enable the defaults, do


$ sudo update-rc.d servicename defaults