[FC2] Can I disable these "unnecessnary" services?(a bit long)

[James Wilkinson]

Patrick Chiang wrote:
> Almost all people will suggest me to turn off those unnecessnary
> services after installation, but what kind of services should be
> considered as "uncessnary"?

Edward wrote:
> I'd just like to say this is a very good question, and one I've often 
> pondered myself.
> 
> Every newer version (Redhat 5.x up to FC2), seems to have more and more 
> services turned on by default. And, like a lot of other people I'm sure 
> we'd like to turn off the ones we don't use (I mean, if CPU speed is 
> meant for laptops, why is it running on my desktop?). I also have not 
> turned off a lot of them because I haven't a clue what they do, and I 
> don't want to break the system.
> 
> Does anyone know of a list which specifically lists all services, what 
> they do, and typical people that would/wouldn't need them?

Normally, a combination of looking at the first few lines of the script
(e.g.
$ head /etc/init.d/cpuspeed
#!/bin/sh
# Startup script for cpuspeed
#
# chkconfig: 12345 06 99
# description: Run dynamic CPU speed daemon
...)

and the description for the package (e.g.
$ rpm -qif /etc/init.d/cpuspeed
<snip>
Description :
kernel-utils contains several utilities that can be used to control
the kernel or your machines hardware. Included are
* dmidecode - gives information about the bios and motherboard revisisons
* microcode_ctl - updates the microcode on Intel cpu's
* smartctl - monitor the health of your disks
)

gives you a basic idea of what they do. "Typical" is difficult, because
there are so many different workloads, and their users all think them
"typical" or "fairly typical".

What would you want that can't be got this way? (Pointers to what I've
just done?)

James.

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