The difference between /etc/init.d/progname start and progname start

[Behrang Saeedzadeh]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 08:14:24 -0500, Kirtis Bakalarczyk
<kirtis.bakalarczyk at gmail.com> wrote:
> /etc/init.d/prognam is used to start daemons -- that is, programs that
> run in the background and provide a service, like a web server, or
> email server, etc. The files in /etc/init.d/ are scripts that take
> care of most of the details of starting and stopping these services,
> including running the actual program that provides the service.
> 
> Typing "progname start", runs progname and passes "start" as it's
> first argument.  Assuming "progname" is designed to take an argument
> named "start" (i can't think of any that do), then it will act
> accordingly.

Is it possible that both of them do the same thing? For example, I can
run samba by both writing:

    sudo? samba start

and

   sudo? /etc/init.d/samba start

Are they doing the same thing?

BTW - A friend of mine told me that I can write

   service {whatever} start|stop|restart

in Fedora that is a short form of the 

   /etc/init.d/{whatever} start|stop|restart

Do I need to do something special in Ubuntu inorder to be able to use
the "service" command?

Best Regards,
Behrang S.

BTW - The "?" in the above lines is the familiar reg exp symbol of "optional" ;)


-- 

Behrang Saeedzadeh
http://www.jroller.com/page/behrangsa