how do I know which services I really need to keep and which I don't?


Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: how do I know which services I really need to keep and which I don't?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Boston
    Posts
    96

    how do I know which services I really need to keep and which I don't?

    I've been trying to stop services I don't need, but last time I did that I was left alone with no sound and alot of problems. I checked search engine (I usually use google) to see what the service is, but sometimes I still don't know whether I should keep it or not. Any advices to find which programs are using which services?
    these are something I'm struggling at this moment:

    atd: (description says run command scheduled by at command... etc etc.) it sounds like what crond does....

    nfslock: I don't have nfs running by default, but nfslock is active. Do I really need this?

    rawdevices

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    SF Bay Area, CA
    Posts
    14,936
    atd is different from crond in that crond runs commands repeatedly, on a schedule. You would use atd if you only want to run the command once (e.g. "at now "echo hello >~/tempfile"" or something like that would immediately print "hello" into the ~/tempfile file, and only do it once).

    I'm not positive what nfslock is, but it sounds like something to help NFS clients (or servers?) with locking. The default NFS server doesn't support file locking, because of issues with network latency. You almost assuredly don't need it.

    I have no idea at all what rawdevices is... it might set up your /dev/rawX device nodes, but I don't see why that would need to run more than once, so I don't think that's it.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    233
    humm,

    Hard to tell you about which services to disable/enable without knowing the environment of your box client/server. I'm assuming you would want to enable/disable your services at boot time. If your unsure about which services are safe to disable simply disable one service at a time each time you bootup your system. If things don't work out you can always re-start the service.

    Can't tell you much about atd service other than if you don't want your system running cron jobs you can disable the service, to run cron jobs the atd service should be running.

    nfslocking is started automatically when needed by the kernel so when its
    not needed it won't run so I'd leave that one alone.
    software design -- solving a problem by interconnecting simpler tools, rather than creating large monolithic application programs.
    --------------------------------------------
    Database Software

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Posts
    1,012
    Originally posted by bwkaz

    I have no idea at all what rawdevices is... it might set up your /dev/rawX device nodes, but I don't see why that would need to run more than once, so I don't think that's it.
    Rawdevices is needed if you run Oracle and (I think) if you have a DVD drive. Not sure on that last bit.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Fife, Scotland
    Posts
    1,794
    Under RedHat and Mandrake you can do:

    > chkconfig --list

    This will show what services are listed (easier than editing the SysVInit files).

    Killing off anything that you don't *think* you need is perfectly normal - I'm usually pretty brutal at pruning services that I don't need.

    If you're unsure, then try to get the manpage of the service and see what it is. You can also Google for the service and see what comes back.

    Some of it is obvious (no prizes for guessing what sound does) but a lot isn't. LPD is the Line Printer Daemon for example.

    The NFSLock is the service that augments NFSD for creating lock files on a remote system so that if someone has it open or it is in use then another user can't write to it.

    Lastly, you could always post here asking what services are what and we'll do our best to explain them.

    James
    -----------------------------
    UseLinux.net
    -----------------------------

    perl -e 'use Math::Complex;$|=1;for$r(0..24){for$c (0..79){$C=cplx(($c/20.0)-3.0,-($r/12.0)+1.0);$Z= cplx(0,0);for($i=0;($i<80)&&(abs($Z)<2.0);$i++){$Z =$Z*$Z+$C;}print$i>=80?"*":" ";}print"\n";}'

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •