Manage services in Ubuntu

Start a service
(myServ is a service name)

sudo /etc/init.d/myServ start

or

sudo service myServ start

Stop a service

sudo /etc/init.d/myServ stop

or

sudo service myServ stop

Disable a service
Check if the service is handled by Upstart first by using

status myServ

If it returns the following message,

status: Unknown job: myServ

it's not handled by Upstart, disable it using

sudo update-rc.d myServ disable

For the service that is handled by Upstart, the output of the status command will be like:-

myServ start/running, process 989

If that's the case, then the service can be disabled by doing one of the following

• Open the Upstart job definition file (e.g. /etc/init/myServ.conf) and then comment out the "start on" line by putting a "#" in front of it.
• Add a special keyword "manual" to the job definition file by just using the command "echo"

echo manual | sudo tee -a /etc/init/myServ.conf

Enable a service
For non-Upstart managed services, use

sudo update-rc.d myServ enable

For Upstart managed services, undo what's been done above.

Refs:
http://lwn.net/Articles/382853/
http://askubuntu.com/questions/19320/whats-the-recommend-way-to-enable-disable-services