AFAIK the method described only works if sysvinit is still the init system (no longer the default as of Debian 8 - with systemd you can achieve the same by masking the unit file with a link to /dev/null). I could’ve sworn I’ve seen an apt.conf option that disables daemon auto-start but I can’t for the life of me find it now.
I’ve never understood why auto-starting daemons is the default on Debian-based systems and why it’s so difficult to work around that behaviour…
I’ve never understood why auto-starting daemons is the default on Debian-based systems…
It could just be because I’ve used Debian for so long, but it’s what I’d personally expect to happen. If I install the package openssh-server, I expect an OpenSSH server to be installed, configured with sane defaults, and running. The expectation is that you should only have to edit config files if you want different-than-default behavior, not as a required step to get a package working.
Yes, that’s a fair comment (and Debian packages do, for the most part, come with sane defaults). In a lot of cases it doesn’t make sense to auto-start a daemon until it’s been configured though (eg, a configuration management system installed package with a custom configuration file) - why is there no easy knob to disable autostart on installation? And I say that as someone who’s used Debian almost exclusively since (I think) 1.3 - it still annoys me!
I completely agree that starting daemons automatically is annoying and potentially a security issue. Many times I have installed something to find that some dependency includes an auto-starting daemon.
AFAIK the method described only works if sysvinit is still the init system (no longer the default as of Debian 8 - with systemd you can achieve the same by masking the unit file with a link to
/dev/null). I could’ve sworn I’ve seen anapt.confoption that disables daemon auto-start but I can’t for the life of me find it now.I’ve never understood why auto-starting daemons is the default on Debian-based systems and why it’s so difficult to work around that behaviour…
It could just be because I’ve used Debian for so long, but it’s what I’d personally expect to happen. If I install the package
openssh-server, I expect an OpenSSH server to be installed, configured with sane defaults, and running. The expectation is that you should only have to edit config files if you want different-than-default behavior, not as a required step to get a package working.Yes, that’s a fair comment (and Debian packages do, for the most part, come with sane defaults). In a lot of cases it doesn’t make sense to auto-start a daemon until it’s been configured though (eg, a configuration management system installed package with a custom configuration file) - why is there no easy knob to disable autostart on installation? And I say that as someone who’s used Debian almost exclusively since (I think) 1.3 - it still annoys me!
I completely agree that starting daemons automatically is annoying and potentially a security issue. Many times I have installed something to find that some dependency includes an auto-starting daemon.