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Whats the difference between using chkconfig on and using chkconfig --add?

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3 Answers 3

up vote 7 down vote accepted

chkconfig --add adds a new service to the list of services managed by chkconfig. I believe --add is an implicit on.

chkconfig on sets the runlevel for the service.

That said, I tend to use chkconfig -add for adding new services to a system, but ntsysv to manage them (on RHEL-like systems).

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I ran this chkconfig ntpd on without ever running --add and that seemed to work fine. –  DD. Apr 30 '12 at 14:42
chkconfig --add is for adding new services; e.g. services or daemons that are not already registered on the server. For instance, if I download software that doesn't have an init script and I write one... I would have to place that script in /etc/init.d/ and run chkconfig --add to allow it to be managed in the same manner. –  ewwhite Apr 30 '12 at 14:44

In Redhat/CentOS, there is one line in the init script which looks like

# chkconfig: - 65 10

If you use --add when the first arg of above line is "-", this adds no start links, only the kill links. So for --add to work, you have to edit the init script and change to e.g.

# chkconfig: 345 65 10

But if chkconfig --add ... was executed with the "-" as first arg (which is mostly the case from rpm post script): Changing afterwards the first arg and reexecute chkconfig --add has no effect as long as the kill links are present. In this case --list shows off for all runlevel:

chkconfig --list saslauthd

To make --add work in this case, you first have to use --del, then the output of --list is:

chkconfig --list saslauthd
service saslauthd supports chkconfig, but is not referenced in any runlevel (run 'chkconfig --add saslauthd')

Now you can use --add and it has the desired effect.

Alternatively you can use "on" with the --level argument to avoid the need of editing the init script and to avoid first --del followed by --add.

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Which OS are you running? If you run chkconfig with only a service name as an argument, I believe RHEL's chkconfig simply checks if that service is set to run at which ever run level you are currently running (said Dr. Suess).

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