A question about services
Hello list
I have some questions about the use of some of the services that are &
can be initiated at start up. I see these listed via the Administration
menu option, using GNOME on an up-to-date testing Debian system.
1. The following describes my current requirements:
This machine is a single user desktop, provides CUPS server to an
ethernet LAN-connected client Debian machine, and both machines access
the Internet via a dedicated hardware firewall but separately connected
to the pre-firewall hub.
I have no need for bluetooth, sane, power management options, and I
don't have a NFS, nor wireless. This machine runs Tor with Tor's new
friend, polipo, with privoxy continuing to be updated but seemingly no
longer required by Tor.
I have KDE4 installed and Xfce4 and I use GNOME daily. KDE4 requires MySQL.
There is an external USB drive connected to my machine which I access
frequently so is mounted at boot up.
2. Services currently activated at start up (according to GNOME):
alsa-utils - audi settings (I'm okay with that)
anacron - actions scheduler (needed)
atd - actions scheduler (needed)
avahi-daemon - multicast DNS service discovery (do I need this?)
cpudfrequtils (shows useful info when called up with hardinfo)
cron - actions scheduler (needed)
cups - printer service (needed)
dirmngr - ? (no idea - sounds reasonable but ...?)
exim4 - mail agent (maybe needed for POP3 and accessing GMail from my
email client?)
hal - ? (needed, I think)
kerneloops - automated crash reports support (can't be bad)
lm-sensors - hardware monitor (probably a good thing)
loadcpufreq - ? (maybe worth having enabled?)
mysql - database server (KDE4 seems to need it and it's handy if I
needed a decent dBase)
polipo - ? (now seemingly relied on by Tor, which I do want)
portmap - rpc mapper (wasn't this the bette noire for crackers scanning
ports? Anyway, do I need it for mounting/ accessing the external USB
drive?)
pyro-nsd - ? (seemingly necessary for Python calls & as I have a number
of Python utilities and libraries loaded, so will keep that)
rsyslog - ? (systems logging - needed)
sudo - ? (needed)
tor - ? (needed)
3. Questions:
3.1. Do I need anacron *and* atd *and* cron? Do they all work together
or am I wasting resources, etc., by having all going? How do I figure
out which one is the safest to stop?
3.2. Given the description of my system requirements, do I need to run
services like:
* avahi-daemon
* dirmngr
* exim4
* portmap
Thanks for any opinions you can offer.
AG
Reply to: