Guest jamesgf Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 Hello all, i recently installed mdk9.1 and was wondering what services should be running. The system is used only as a desktop, no server needed. Its used for office work, music, games, and web surfing. Id like to turn off any services that are not needed to free up resources. Here are the services currently running: apmd atd crond cups devfsd dm fam harddrake internet keytable kheader linuxconf lisa netfs network nfslock partmon portmap random rawdevices sound switchprofile syslog tmdns webmin xfs xinetd all on boot. I am using alsa and noticed that it isnt started on boot, should it be? my sound works fine during startup. thanks! -jamie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 http://www.mandrakeusers.org/docs/admin/aservice.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 This is one of the most popular questions ever. Webmin doesn't really need to be running at boot. It's useful mainly for networked computers...administration kinda stuff. Same with linuxconf. As for the others, you can click 'info' in MCC to see more about what they do and decide whether you want them running. If you have 128 MB RAM or more, the optional services don't really use enough system resources to really worry about. I'll give you the info I know: apmd - I think this is power mgmt. I don't even have it installed on my system and I have a simple 2-computer network. atd - Similar to crond. It runs certain commands at specified times with the 'at' command and other batch commands when the system load is low enough. I leave this running. You can look at commands scripts you have scheduled either with linuxconf or webmin. When Webmin is running, you can access it through your browser at https://127.0.0.1:10000 Linuxconf is run from the command line (a terminal) as root or I think it is accessible through the 'Start' menu (configuration stuff). I like Webmin the best, especially if you have the latest version. Note that if you don't have these starting at boot, you'll have to start them before you can access them. crond - Runs scripts/commands at specified times. See also atd above. cups - printer daemon. It's most useful on a network, but runs printer services for a standalone workstation, too. You can have it not run at boot and then start it right before you need to print, but it sits idle and doesn't do anything when there is no printing to be done, so don't worry about it really, leave it running. devfsd - Not really sure exactly what this does, but it basically treats your devices as a virutal file system. I would leave this running and at boot. dm - Manages your desktop logons. Leave it starting at boot. fam - Filesystem monitor. I don't think you really need this running without a network. It lets you know if file permissions change, etc. harddrake - If you don't add new hardware to your computer frequently (unplug stuff and plug it back in) you can stop this from starting at boot. Some hardware will fool you though. With my regular PS2 mouse, I could stop harddrake from starting at boot with no problems, but since I got my Microsoft Optical mouse, for some reason, it needs to have harddrake detect it at each boot or it won't work. To sum it up, leaving this starting at boot, only really slows down your bootup time a little and I would leave it running. No biggie. internet - This probably depends whether you use cable/dsl or dialup and I won't give you my opinion on it because I'm unsure. keytable - Leave it running. It gives you your keyboard keytables, I believe. kheader - Leave it running. linuxconf - See the beginning of my post. Configuration tool. lisa - Not exactly sure what this is. netfs - I really don't think you need this, but I've never turned mine off. network - Brings up your eth0 and lo (loopback) connections. If you use a network card for a dsl modem or cable modem, leave it alone. Also if you want to test your security, leave it alone. Basically, I would leave it running. It doesn't hurt anything, even if you may not need it. nfslock - Not exactly sure partmon - I think this monitors how close your partitions are to being full and warns you. Not sure. portmap - Not sure random - I would leave this running. It helps make your algorithms more random for encryption or if you write shell scripts that need it (I think) rawdevices - I would leave this running sound - DUH. switchprofile - Dunno syslog - leave running tmdns - dunno webmin - See beginning of post xfs - Not sure xinetd - leave this running I believe this is the most in depth answer anyone's ever given. Most people just say 'play around with it, rebooting each time, if your system doesn't work properly, you probably needed that' ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 As for your alsa question. If you have sound, I wouldn't worry about it unless you do intensive high-quality recording or like awesome sound when playing games or whatever. IMHO, alsa is just too buggy to worry with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 Of course you could read the docs posted by anon in 3 seconds while i was typing my 5 minute post that prolly didn't help much. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qnr Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 Since fam isn't in the docs provided, I'd like to add a comment to Steve's statement that you turn it off. Some programs require it to update on file changes. For example, seti@home addons frequently use it. Edit: Added description of fam: terry@timestorm: /etc/init.d 11:32:28 $ gaze what fam GUI tools should not mislead the user; they should display the current state of the system, even when changes to the system originate from outside of the tools themselves. fam and imon help make GUI tools more usable by notifying them when the files they're interested in are created, modified, executed, and removed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jamesgf Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 thanks for your replies! I think ill turn off the following services and give it a try lisa netfs nfslock partmon portmap switchprofile tmdns webmin My system is a 1.4 ghz P4 w/ 384mb ram, probably wont notice much change... -jamie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 If you want fam don't turn off portmap. It won't work. There're very, very few apps that use fam. The only 2 I've encountered are nautilus and gedit. They'll still run without fam and portmap unless you're on the internet :roll: then they won't even start. You'll know if a program needs them. If an app won't start, run it from a terminal and it'll tell you it couldn't connect to fam or something like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 Maybe this could help http://mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?p=5202#5202 Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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