Re: Why is proftpd always started when one update it?

[Ted Cabeen <ted@impulse.net>]

Preben Randhol <randhol@pvv.org> writes:

> Hi
>
> This is really annoying and insecure. I have proftpd installed on my
> debian in those rare occations I cannot use SSH to transfer files
> from another computer. However I do not want proftpd to run except when
> I start it manually myself and after the transfer I turn it off. I saw
> now that there was an security alert for proftpd so I updated it and
> again it put up symlinks in /etc/rcX.d/ so that the proftpd starts when
> I boot the system. I had to do a update-rc.d -f proftpd remove again.

Individual admins are not supposed to use update-rc.d to disable a
packaged program from starting.  update-rc.d is supposed to be for the
use of the installer programs, not admins.  If you want to prevent a
program from starting at boot-time, remove all of the links from the
rc.? directories except one kill link.  That way the update-rc.d
script will know that the program has already been installed and will
not change anything.  When you remove all of the links, it has no way
of knowing that the program was already installed and the admin
removed the links, so it restores them all.

-- 
Ted Cabeen
Systems/Network Administrator
Impulse Internet Services