RH9.0 services ... which ones are "useless" ?

[Membrax]

Hi !

I'd like to get my RH9.0 system a bit lighter.
In that purpose I'd like to disable some services which load up during each boot process.

Hereunder a list containing all the services which are currently running :
- acpid
- anacron
- atd
- autofs
- check4updates
- crond
- firstboot
- gpm
- ipchains
- iptables
- keytable
- kudzu
- microcode_ctl
- netfs
- network
- nfslock
- pcmcia
- portmap
- random
- rawdevices
- rhnsd
- sendmail
- sgi_fam
- sshd
- syslog
- wine
- xinetd

... it seems quite obvious that too many services are running.

Shame on me, I have to admit I don't have a clue of what all those services do (for at least 90% of them ...).

Which ones are "useless" (so to speak) ?

[Tux]

The more appropriate question is which ones are 'useful' and that is personal to you.
Now on a normal day I would tell you what all those serivces were, but im very busy writing some insane stuff about car suspension, and quite frankly i'm not sure what *every* one of them is
But i can think of someone who does...

[Membrax]

You're right.
Actually, as soon as I'll be able to identify each role of them (hey guys, that's a call for a hand !) it'll finally get easier to define which ones fit my needs and which ones don't.

[Void Main]

There is no answer that covers every situation. It really depends on what type of system you are referring to and how it's used as to which ones you need to turn off or start up. I would suggest you first get familiar with what the services you have running are and what they do. An easy way to get an overview is to run the graphical services tool (redhat-config-services command). It gives a description of each service.

For instance, if you are not running a laptop you probably have no reason to have the pcmcia service start. If you don't use NFS sharing between your machines you can turn off nfslock and portmap. I always turn off any update daemons like rhnsd and whatever that "check4updates" thing is you have running (don't beelieve I've ever seen that one). If you use a hardware firewall and don't want to run firewalling on your machine you can turn off ipchains/iptables. If you do want to run firewalling you still don't need both of them running. Turn off ipchains (it's the old way). If you don't plan to have your machine act as a mail server or send mail out you can turn off sendmail.

Just take each one and do some googling (or check the man pages) if the services tool doesn't give you enough information.