[luau] Re: turning off redhat services

[Eric Jeschke]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 luau-request at videl.ics.hawaii.edu wrote:

| Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:14:21 -0500 (EST)
| From: tburns at despammed.com
| Subject: [luau] turning off radhat services
| 
| [snip]...
| kudzu           recognizes hardware at startup. Is there a way to turn
| it off later? Is that a good idea? 

You can run it manually after you add new hardware if you like.  It *may*
be needed for some kinds of USB and/or firewire hot-plugging, so I
usually leave it on (not sure about this, YMMV).
 
| netfs           supposed to automount nfs and smbfs shares, on if you
|  want?

Correct.  If you aren't mounting any net-based volumes you can turn this off.

| rawdevices      no idea, on.

Used to manage raw partitions, e.g. by applications like Oracle.  Only
used by esoteric sw, to my knowledge.  Most people can turn this off.

| ipchains iptables    firewall stuff, one or other on. Actually my
|  system has both on, a problem?

You should only need one.  Newer Redhat's, e.g. 8.0 can use iptables for
the built-in firewall config.

| ntpd            network time protocol daemon, has been a security
|  hole, probably off.

I think this is a fairly safe one, provided you have a trustworthy time
connection (I don't know how many public time servers are using the
authentication mechanisms).  This will keep your computer's time synced,
and can in turn, optionally provide time service to other computers on
your network. 

| portmap         required for samba or NFS, I forget.

NFS.  Turn it off if you don't use NFS.
 
| xinetd          long story, off probably.

Definitely off unless you need some xinetd-based service (e.g. IMAPS). 
 
| rhnsd           red hat network, on if you use it.

Is this strictly necessary?  Is this just to turn on the little button
that says "update available"?  I've always wondered, but never looked
into it.
 
| autofs          no idea

Automounting CD-ROMs, floppys, USB/Firewire drives, etc.  Good to leave
it on if you like automounting removable storage (most people do).
 
| nscd            no idea

Isn't this the name-server cacheing daemon?  Useful if you want to cache
name lookups for a local network, otherwise off.

| identd          Identifies you to IRC servers, from what I can tell.
|  Known security problem; disable if you don't IRC.

Is this used for anything besides IRC?

| isdn            no idea

If you don't have ISDN, turn it off.

| vncserver       no idea

Easier to run this manually after sshing in, plus then you can tunnel
the connection for security.  Off.
 
| yppasswdd  ypserv  ypxfrd  samba?

yp stuff on if you run NIS.  Most people can leave this off.  samba on
only if you have it configured properly and you need it (Windows file share).
 
| winbind    no idea

More Windows-compatability stuff.  Off unless you know you need it.

Eric Jeschke
http://redskiesatnight.com/