Chkconfig is a script that helps control the automatic startup of server daemons. It works by creating the various run level symbolic links needed to a control a service init script.

First off, the initialization script needs to be copied to /etc/rc.d/init.d.

Although chkconfig itself doesn’t require it, the script needs to be owned by root and executable:

ls -al /etc/rc.d/init.d/named

-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         2365 Jan 18  2006 named

To start this automatically, first we have to add it to chkconfig:

chkconfig –add named

Then we can configure it to start at the appropriate run levels, usually 3, 4 and 5:

chkconfig –levels 345 named on

Disabling this service later would only require:

chkconfig –levels 345 named off

or more simply:

chkconfig –levels named off

If we want to see the sevices set to be started automatically, we can use:

chkconfig –list

Executing man chkconfig will provide the complete user documentation.