This is an old thread, but I’ll add what I've just learned to help others who come here.
For Debian, the problem with the answer given is that the change will be undone the next time there's an update to the software. From the man page for update-rc.d
:
A common system administration error is to delete the links with the
thought that this will "disable" the service, i.e., that this will
prevent the service from being started. However, if all links have
been deleted then the next time the package is upgraded, the package's
postinst script will run update-rc.d again and this will reinstall
links at their factory default locations.
I believe that it’s better to use the disable directive:
sudo update-rc.d apache2 disable
This has the advantage that the enable
directive can reverse the change.
Please add your distribution. – squareborg – 2013-01-24T15:15:47.430
I have Debian Wheezy. – Kyrol – 2013-01-25T14:18:08.467