How to auto start services on boot in Centos / Redhat

To auto start services in Centos or Redhat OS, you can use builtin chkconfig utility. It is located in /sbin directory. If you are a regular user (non-root), then /sbin may not be in your path. Therefore, you may have to use the full path to access the chkconfig utility.

To auto start a new service:

Find out the name of service’s script from /etc/init.d/ directory e.g. mysqld or httpd

Add it to chkconfig

sudo /sbin/chkconfig -–add mysqld

Make sure it is in the chkconfig.

sudo /sbin/chkconfig -–list mysqld

Set it to autostart

sudo /sbin/chkconfig mysqld on

To stop a service from auto starting on boot

sudo /sbin/chkconfig mysqld off