Which services to shut down?

[k4dgw]

I have a new install of FC2, and I looked through the running services. There were some that were enabled, that I was sure I did not need (such as sendmail) but others were less clear to me.

Has anyone done a rundown of the listed services in the configuration diag, and listed what they each are and what they do? Often the little one line description that is availble is of limited help for a newbie. Thanks.

Dave

[Picomp314]

disable mdmpd, especially if you see it fail during startup...

[k4dgw]

Ok, thanks. I don't remember seeing anything fail, but I will keep an eye on it.

Dave

[RedFedora]

Usually you can tell if you should keep a service running
by looking at the man page for the service. For example,
running "man xinetd" will give you some info about the xinetd service...

Some basic advice, I usually keep anything to do with printing enabled,
xinetd, keyboard stuff enabled and things to do with ports/hardware.
Things to disable? Well, unless you're running a server, probably any
ftpd, httpd, smtp services can be shut down. Really though, try shutting down
as much as possible. If you do one too many and your system stops working,
reboot in single user mode and re-enable the service.

Most services and their enable/disabled status are kept in /etc/xinetd.d/

[bradthemad]

Here's a bash quickie to display information on every startup script:

you@localhost$ for s in /etc/rc.d/init.d/*; do
> clear
> r=`rpm -qf $s`
> s=`basename $s`
> echo -e "Service: $s\n"
> chkconfig --list $s
> echo
> rpm -qi $r
> echo -ne "\nPress ENTER"
> read continue
> done

[k4dgw]

Thanks for all the replys. I travel for work and I use the free wireless connections at the hotels. They do not run security, but I wanted to keep as much stuff shut down as possible. When I looked around in services, I saw stuff running talking about raid, which I am not using. The usual stuff, telnet, ftp, and such I am aware of and I know what to shut down, but the services listing now showed so much other stuff that I was not sure of. Thanks, and I will give these ideas a try.

Dave

[cclo123]

http://www.sorgonet.com/linux/linuxdaemons/

[superbnerd]

Once you have conifgured your computer and all is running well, you can disable kudzu the hardware browser from checking for new hardware at startup.

[robopera]

You should disable anything that you will not need as a home user. I am assuming here that you are not running a server of any kind.
Unless you actively use things, they should be disabled. Since I use FC2 as a simple desktop machine, I disabled anacron, atd, crond, microcode (not supported) all nfs-related services, portmap, sendmail, and ssh (I don't use it). The more services that are disabled, the safer you are. Since I take my laptop out for wireless excursions, I truly would be nuts to leave anything running that is not really needed, and these are few. I leave cups running for printing and ntp and pcmcia, that's about it other than kudzu, and a couple of others.

[AliOop]

A question concerning disabling kudzu. I use an external UBS CD burner that I switch between two machines. Will disabling kudzu cause a problem with it? Would it been better if I just left kudzu in service?

[robopera]

once the system knows about a certain piece of hardware, that's it. you can turn off kudzu if you wish, but any new hardware you add will not be seen on the fly unless you turn kudzu back on.

[robopera]

kudzu in and of itself is NOT a dangerous service to be running. sendmail is evil, on the other hand, as can be ssh, portmap, and a number of others.

[superbnerd]

your right, kudzu is not dangerous, but it slows you boot considerabley without reason unless your condtantly adding new hardware to your system, which is slitely unusual for the average home user.