How to stop mysql from running at boot time?

Question

Currently, my MySQL server starts on every server boot. For a couple reasons, this is undesirable behavior. Is there a way to disable this behavior?

Answer 1

Since 15.04 you can simply do:

sudo systemctl disable mysql

Answer 2

To prevent mysql from starting on boot:

1. Open the terminal: Ctrl+Alt+T

2. Open the mysql.conf file: nano /etc/init/mysql.conf

3. Comment out the start on line near the top of the file, the start on might be spread across two lines, so comment out both. (comment adding # at the beginning)

If you want to manually start mysql, use the following command:

service mysql start

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Taken liberally from here.

Answer 3

In Ubuntu 18.04, sudo systemctl disable mysql will prevent mysql-server from autostarting on boot.

For linux, there are 3 main init systems: Systemd, Upstart and SysV. Although nearly all Linux systems run on Systemd. The other two init systems might also co-exist in your system.

For Systemd, use command sudo systemctl disable mysql;
For Upstart, use echo manual >> /etc/init/mysql.override;
For SysV, run the following command sudo update-rc.d mysql disable

If you'd like to find which init system is running on your server, please read this answer.

Answer 4

Things have changed quite a bit in Ubuntu now. I think from version 11 onwards. MySQL is handled by Upstart while Apache still uses traditional SysV init scripts

For MySQL, you can use the new override feature in Upstart to modify the starting behaviour:

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

For more info, see the section "Disabling a Job from Automatically Starting" in the Upstart Cookbook.

As Apache still uses the traditional SysV init scripts you can use

sudo update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

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

sudo update-rc.d apache2 disable

which "disables" the script by changing it from a start script to a stop script. This is reversible by

sudo update-rc.d apache2 enable

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Most of this information I got from here: https://askubuntu.com/a/40077/24678

Answer 5

There are two Guis I can think of. From Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center search for "boot up manager". After installing you will find it in the System -> Administration -> BootUP-Manager. Another is Webmin. Webmin uses your browser. After installing point your browser to https://localhost:10000/ Look for services and work it from there.

Answer 6

Well I am using Ubuntu 20.04 on my laptop. The problem I faced is that mysql service starts at boot up and takes 32 seconds to move to the next step in the sequence of bootup. So I decided to disable it from the boot sequence to make it boot faster. For this I followed the below steps:

1. I checked for mysql running status by command:

   sudo service mysql status

The result showed the status as in the snippet shown below. There I noticed the source of it's loading - " loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) "

● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2020-04-16 03:45:09 IST; 26min ago

2. So I decided to disabled it using systemctl command as:

   sudo systemctl disable mysql

result of the above command:

Synchronizing state of mysql.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install disable mysql
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mysql.service.

3. Now I can manually start / stop or check the status of mysql service by using the following commands:

   sudo service mysql start

   sudo service mysql stop

   sudo service mysql status

I hope this might help. Cheers.

Answer 7

Actually, there is also another method to accomplish this, via the sysv-rc-conf tool.

You can install it by typing

sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf

It allows you to take control over all available services, including running/stopping them in place and configuring services' operation per runlevel.

Edit: You have to run tis tool as root:

sudo sysv-rc-conf

Answer 8

Or if your really laze like me you could just open a Terminal session and then type:

sudo perl -pi.orig -e 's/start\s+on/#start\s+on/' /etc/init/mysql.conf && sudo perl -pi.orig -e 's/and\s+/#and/g' /etc/init/mysql.conf

You can then just issue a reboot command then your system will boot-up without mysql started.

Answer 9

You can use chkconfig tool package

$ chkconfig --level 345 mysqld off