Services and daemons

[stereotypical anomaly]

I would like to suggest a sticky thread in "software" or perhaps "tips and tricks" that would serve as a guide to "Services and daemons", (aka "Manage system services by enabling or disabling them") in "System" in "PCLinuxOS Control Center, because some, but not all, of the "info" buttons that accompany each service listed are not informative.

For example, the auditd info button states:
     "This starts the Linux Auditing System Daemon, which collects security related events in a dedicated audit log. If this daemon is turned off, audit events will be sent to syslog."

However, the rpcbind info button states:
     "start the rpcbind daemon" which in my opinion is extremely annoying to individuals who, though they may possess little or no knowledge about rpcbind, are at least intelligent enough to know where they are and what the "Start" button located just a few inches to the right is for.

And then there are the ones like saslauthd and atieventsd which are completely redundant and thereby serve no real purpose at all. By the way, there is noticeable improvement on some of the info buttons, (i.e. xinetd) and for that I am very appreciative.

It would be nice if all the info buttons were at least as informative as the auditd info button and personally I would like to know if each is a critical or necessary service and/or the consequences or results of turning each off, especially if there are other dependencies.

So what I'm suggesting/requesting is (a lot, I know) a guide similar to one I found on the internet a few years ago. Haven't been able to remember or locate where, however I did save a cut and paste I did at the time in the form of a text file. It looked something like this:

acpid: Advanced Configuration and Power Interface daemon. This is necessary to control the power management of the computer and is needed in order to make the Linux ACPI support completely functional (running, on boot).

I realize that this sort of thing has the potential to become the subject of much debate particularly in terms of which services are "critical" (i.e. anacron, atd, crond, which I myself don't believe they are but only because I've been told that they are not followed by success running without them being enabled) and which are not. For this I would suggest and accompanying "default" settings list for those that inevitably will shoot first and ask later. We've all done that at least once huh? 

Also, I would be willing to type and format the entire thing, do any research necessary on the few services and daemons I currently have no understanding or listing of, and then submit (as many times as necessary) a rough draft for approval to the appropriate mod or resident site expert (Tex, O-P, etc.) or if there is someone else who does this sort of thing I would be happy to email them a copy of the 90% complete list I have (the cut and paste I did) for them to use/edit/modify/toss in the round file.

I'm thinking this sort of thing would be helpful to better than 50% of the community and, as this is the Linux platform best suited for folks migrating from (expletive), perhaps up to 75% of new users. Personally I used PCLOS for 3 years before I started asking questions here because I was able to find answers just by looking here or by googling (about 50/50). And if one already exists, I sincerely apologize in advance and please let me know where immediately after the ensuing obligatory verbal thrashing and public humiliation.

Thanks

[CAVT]

I like that a lot. Specially if its written for dummies... I don't know what's rcpbind  . It could be also distributed among typical configuration sets, like "a typical desktop with printer/without printer", " a netbook", "laptop", "low resource pc" and alikes.

[stereotypical anomaly]

Thanks CAVT. I'm hoping that a default "out of the box" sticky can be enough info for people to decide:

 - I have no printer. I can turn off and/or disable on boot cups, cups-lpd, oki4daemon, hplip, etc.

 - I'm not running on a laptop/notebook. I can turn off...  apmiser, laptop-mode, ultrabay, etc.

 - My system resources are maxing out. I can turn off pretty much everything but acpid, dm,
   haldaemon, messagebus, etc.

while also providing the potential for solving some "my sound... or scanner... or webcam doesn'twork/quit working

rcpbind - sounds like a virus in another galaxy to me ?..... just kiding (note sp.) 

rpcbind - universal addresses to RPC (Remote Procedure Call) program number mapper used to ensure that certain name-to-address translation-calls function correctly
and also maps RPC program numbers and addresses for both RPC services and RPC clients.
Most commonly used by NFS? (stopped or off, not on boot)
http://linux.die.net/man/8/rpcbind

[Was_Just19]

I know this is an old topic, but I wonder if anything has progressed on the idea?

It would be helpful, particularly when trying to track a fault, to know exactly what each service does, in concise form, from the info button.

I hope it does move forward.

regards.

[Dragynn]

I know this is an old topic, but I wonder if anything has progressed on the idea?

It would be helpful, particularly when trying to track a fault, to know exactly what each service does, in concise form, from the info button.

I hope it does move forward.

regards.

+1

I am eternally grateful to Black Viper, who built his entire website on this premise, and continues to provide a valuable service to Winders users.

In this day and age of ginormous hard-drives and gigs upon gigs of ram, it may be considered somewhat archaic to lean out your OS by dispensing with unwanted services and unused components....but I would submit that not every country in the world is wealthy, nor are all the folks even in so-called "first world" countries. There are still possibly millions of computers worldwide utilizing the bare minimum of old technology... a 256 mb stick of DDR-400 may be something of a joke to many of us, to others, it might be half a years pay, and thus unattainable. A guide to optimizing your OS by explaining services and processes, might make all the difference to some folks.

[rubentje1991]

A little older post from Texstar - but very helpful (I printed it out, and still use it on computers at home - in complementary with the info on the buttons):

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,66925.msg544600.html#msg544600


Turning them off make it definitely faster (surely if your pc is never connected to internet: you can turn all system services off for the internet part itself...)


Maybe a good thing to base your list on....