Ubuntu – How to prevent Tor from starting automatically on Ubuntu server

Newer versions of Tor have a file /etc/default/tor.vidalia. It contains three lines:

if [ -x /usr/bin/vidalia ]; then
        RUN_DAEMON=yes
fi

You can change the option to no. This will prevent from starting as daemon. Instead Tor will now start when you start Vidalia.

MySQL is handled by upstart. In 11.04 you can use the new override feature to modify the starting behaviour:

echo "manual" >> /etc/init/mysql.override

See the section "Disabling a Job from Automatically Starting" in the Upstart Cookbook

Apache still uses traditional SysV init scripts so you use

 update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

to remove the links from /etc/rcX.d or, alternatively, use

 update-rc.d apache2 disable

which "disables" the script by changing it from a start script S91apache2 to a stop script K09apache2. This is reversible by update-rc.d apache2 enable.