10 Apr 2016

How to prevent mpd from starting on boot on Ubuntu 14.04

TLDR

On the command line, run:

sudo update-rc.d mpd disable

Then make sure the following files do not exist:

~/.mpdconf
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf

And we are done!

Explanation

After installing mpd via sudo apt-get install mpd, mpd starts as a service on boot under the mpd user. To prevent mpd from starting as a service on boot, we have to run:

sudo update-rc.d mpd disable

But after doing this, for some reason, mpd still runs on my machine but this time, as my user, because the ~/.mpdconf file exists. Moving it away solved the problem. Oh, in case you were thinking a sudo service mpd stop will solve the problem, it does not, because mpd is not being run as a service on startup.

Even though I found out that the issue lies with the existence of ~/.mpdconf, a glance at man mpd shows the following line:

MPD searches for a config file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf then ~/.mpdconf then /etc/mpd.conf or uses CONF_FILE.

So it seems that other than ~/.mpdconf, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf is present, it could cause mpd to start as my user as well. I moved my mpd config file over to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf, rebooted my system and found that indeed that is the case. Hence these 2 files:

~/.mpdconf
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf

must not be present in order to prevent mpd from starting as the user on boot.

After thoughts

I still have no idea why mpd will start as my user - I must admit that I’m too lazy to do an in depth investigation but I checked the usual suspects of:

~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.profile
~/.zshrc
/etc/bash.bashrc
/etc/profile

and there is no trace of the string mpd in any of those files.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed on this blog are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer(s), past or present.