Which services should be disabled?

Question

Following is the output of $chkconfig | grep 5:on on my laptop running Fedora 14.

NetworkManager  0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
acpid           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
auditd          0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
avahi-daemon    0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
cpuspeed        0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
haldaemon       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
ip6tables       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
iptables        0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
irqbalance      0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
lvm2-monitor    0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
mdmonitor       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
messagebus      0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
netfs           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
nfslock         0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcbind         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcgssd         0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcidmapd       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rsyslog         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
smolt           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
udev-post       0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

I don't use NM for connecting to the Internet. So I think that should be stopped right away. Also I have ext4 filesystem so I assume lvm2-monitor can be safely turned off. My primary usage is surfing net and coding in Python (newbie though).

Which services should I disable so that unnecessarily resources don't remain busy?

Thanks.

Answer 1

NetworkManager  0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

You can do without NetworkManager, but I find it awfully handy for dealing with changing wifi on a laptop (which you say you're using). If you don't need it, though, no harm in turning this off.

acpid           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This is probably what's making your power button work, and what makes the system suspend when you close the lid. You can live without it, but probably don't want to.

auditd          0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This is the userspace part of the Linux Auditing System, which is a more secure way of logging kernel-level events than syslog. Among other things, it records SELinux alerts. Strictly speaking, you don't need it.

avahi-daemon    0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This is for autodiscovery of services on a network — printers being a big example. It's not required.

cpuspeed        0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This will probably just start the right in-kernel CPU frequency scaling driver as an on-start operation, and not run anything. (And if it can't for whatever reason and runs the daemon, you probably want it.)

haldaemon       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This runs hald, which is in the process of being obsoleted but which is, as of Fedora 14, still used for a few things. Best to leave it on for now

ip6tables       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
iptables        0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This sets up the kernel-level packet filter and doesn't leave any user-space daemon running. Leave it on.

irqbalance      0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This is for multi-cpu/multi-core systems. If you just have one, it will exit harmlessly after a few seconds. You can gain a few milliseconds of startup time by chkconfiging it off.

lvm2-monitor    0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
mdmonitor       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

If you're sure you're not using lvm (note that you can use ext4 on top of lvm!), you can turn off lvm2-monitor, and the same goes for md software RAID and mdmonitor.

messagebus      0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This is the d-bus system message bus. If you're using a modern desktop environment, you'll basically need this. If you're not, you can get away without it, but will probably have to hack things up. (I'm pretty sure gdm needs it, for example.)

netfs           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This doesn't run any daemons, but starts any network filesystems in /etc/fstab/. It's harmless either way.

nfslock         0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcbind         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcgssd         0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
rpcidmapd       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

If you're not using NFS, NIS, or some other RPC-based service, all of these can go off.

rsyslog         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

You technically don't need to log anything, but you probably really want to. You could consider tuning it to work in a more lightweight way on your laptop.

smolt           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

This sends anonymized usage statistics back to the Fedora Project. It doesn't run anything, but there's a cron file in /etc/cron.d/smolt which checks the state here. If you don't want it, I suggest removing the entire smolt package. (But consider leaving it — the data is useful to the people putting the distro together for you, and it's only once a month.)

udev-post       0:off   1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

Another run-and-done startup script, this one needed to keep rules generated during the boot process around once the system is up. Leave it on.

Answer 2

It's possible (and likely, if you didn't specify otherwise in the installer) that you are still using LVM with ext4 on the logical volumes, however, lvm2-monitor is really only useful if you're using LVM snapshots and/or mirrors, so it is safe to trun off.

Are you using NFS in any way? If not, you can probably safely turn off the netfs, nfslock and rpc* services.

Do you use any mDNS (or ZeroConf) devices? Avahi-daemon both registers your computer as a mdns device and enables your system to search for similar devices. If you don't plan on ever using that, you can disable it.

The other services are fairly normal to have running (like rsyslog), or are simply startup processes that don't leave around running processes (like smolt and udev-post).