I'm using a VPS, and with the Ubuntu 16.04 image I can successfully install bind9
, but it doesn't start on boot. There's no named
or bind9
under /etc/init.d
. Running service bind9 start
works as expected. Any ideas?

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2 Answers
You then may try to manually activate it:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/update-rc.d.8.html
(legacy) Example:
# update-rc.d bind9 enable
On systemd, it would be:
# systemctl enable bind9

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Thanks a lot! `update-rc.d bind9 enable` gave me the error `update-rc.d: error: cannot find a LSB script for bind9`, but `systemctl enable bind9` worked as a charm! – ezequiel-garzon Jul 13 '16 at 18:46
Just adding onto roothahn's answer as I feel it could use a little explanation, what you will want to do is systemctl enable bind9
. Ubuntu 16.04 uses systemd instead of init, so most services are done via systemctl
, rather than service
and /etc/init.d scripts (which I assume still exist for compatibility reasons).
In terms of starting, restarting and stopping services, it's not a huge change. For example, you would do systemctl restart ssh
instead of service ssh restart
, systemctl stop mysql
instead of service mysql restart
, etc. The program name now comes last, which makes it easier to alias (I have :r
aliased to systemctl reload-or-restart
, so I can just :r ssh
to restart sshd)

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Thanks for the insight! I'll keep that in mind. What puzzles me is that in general doing an `apt-get install` of a service tends to set it up so that it starts on boot. Maybe it's something Ubuntu will polish in future versions? – ezequiel-garzon Jul 14 '16 at 09:22
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1Yeah, I find that odd too. That's something strange that I've always known Ubuntu/Debian to do. – apricot boy Jul 14 '16 at 10:52
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1some services are not boot-enabled by default, that's decided by the package maintainers. btw, you can just use "apt" now (since trusty). – sgohl Jul 14 '16 at 15:31
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1I also wondered why the manpage I linked to is for xenial, since I was sure it uses systemd now, but I had no xenial by hand to validate – sgohl Jul 18 '16 at 10:37