chkconfig vs /etc/inittab

Question

I had a look at what chkconfig and /etc/inittab - from what I could see both does the same something.

If I am wrong, what is the different and which one I should use for specific requirement?

Answer 1

They are not the same thing. I guess you mean the cli command chkconfig, right?

/etc/inittab is a file which is read by the init process on startup. Thats the process that takes care of starting and stopping services inside your system.

chkconfig is a cli tool that create and remove filesystem symlinks. these symlinks are used to tell the init process at which stage of the system boot, which process should be started or stopped.

man inittab and man chkconfig should tell you more details about that

under man 8 init you can also see a description of what the init process is actually using the /etc/inittab for.