[NCLUG] Debian update-rc.d question

[Marcio Luis Teixeira]

I would like to disable the startup of "dhcpd" from my system, but yet keep it 
installed (since I want to be able to start it manually). The Debian newbie 
guide, section 4.4 has instructions on removing scripts from a runlevel:

cd /etc/init.d
mv my_sample_script my_sample_script.DISABLED
update-rc.d my_sample_script remove

The part about renaming the file seems very odd to me. Most other distros I've 
used have the convention that you never, ever change the stuff in /etc/init.d 
but instead use a tool that modifies the sym links. RedHat and IRIX use 
"chkconfig" and gentoo has "rc-update".

I guess Debian's "update-rc.d" has a "-f" flag for changing the links without 
the renaming step, but I get very worried when I have to use a "-f" flag of 
any sort because that generally means "don't do this unless you really know 
what you are doing."

Since I don't yet know what I am doing, my question is whether using 
"update-rc.d -f dhcp remove" is really the proper way to disable dhcp at 
startup. If so, why does "update-rc.d" nit-pick about the script still being 
there? Is there any reason I would want to rename it?

Marcio Luis Teixeira