Service start / stop / restart – no output

launchctl(8) is your friend. Just keep in mind that some of the services (sshd for example) are disabled in the configuration file so you will need to use the -w switch when loading them. Here is a sshd example:

$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist 

You can stop the service using the unload subcommand.

$ sudo launchctl unload  /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist 

To list the services, as you might have already guessed use the 'list' subcommand ;)

For chkconfig only the following lines matter

# chkconfig: 345 26 74
# description: Start script for launch my service

Here is the explanation

345 -- Level on which to start the service. 25 --> startup priority. (i.E. this script will be run after all the other scripts with priority less than 26 have been executed) 74 --> shutdown priority ( i.e This script will be called after all the other scripts with priority less than 74 has been executed)

The other details, do not matter, if you are only using chkconfig under RHEL and its clones (Centos, scientific etc..)

The "INIT INFO" block is for compatibility with Debian. IF you are not going to run the init scripts under debian this does not matter and can be ignored.

choose a shutdown priority that lower than the dependencies, and obliviously the start priority needs to be higher than the dependencies

Also: this link might of use to you CentOS 5.5: service not stopped on shutdown