Boot Processes I Turned Off
I executed /sbin/chkconfig –list | grep on to see all of the things that the system automatically starts on boot at different runlevels. I then went through them to find any obvious things that I don’t use.
To turn something off: /sbin/chkconfig
- cpuspeed
- This can change the cpu speed on the fly if you have a “mobile” version of CPU. Useful for laptops, but not for my desktop. Turned off. Had to use the –level 12345 switch because by default chkconfig only affects levels 2,3,4,5.
- apmd
- Takes care of batteries. Also useful for laptops. I use apcupsd to run my ups, and it seems that acpi has superseded apm anyway. So, unless this makes something break, it’ll stay off.
- hpoj
- I don’t have any HP printers or other devices hooked up to my computer
- isdn
- As far as I can tell, this is a very old part of the kernel. I don’t have ISDN, and I trust that as long as I’m getting my network through a standard 100BaseT connection, I don’t need this for anything else.
- iiim
- Some sort of Sun protocol. It also seems to have something to do with emacs. (Gasp!) Deleted!
- pcmcia
- I don’t have any pcmcia cards. Gone.
- sendmail
- I don’t run a local mailserver, and if I did, it would be qmail. Bye-bye.
- mdmonitor
- This helps mdadm, a software RAID tool for linux. I don’t do software RAID, if wanted a hard drive array, I would buy a card to do it. Asta la vista.
- iptables, ip6tables
- I have a hardware firewall between my computer and the internet, so I won’t bother with the software overhead. buh-bye.
- arptables_jf
- For the arptables firewall to filter ARP requests. I’m fairly certain that I’m not using it, especially since I’m not even using iptables
- irqbalance
- balances IRQs across multiple processors in an SMP system. I don’t have multiple processors, and I don’t have a hyperthreading processor, so it’s done for.
There’s a bunch of other stuff pertaining to nfs that I can probably get rid of also. I also probably can get rid of portmap, since I don’t use any RPC protocols (I think.) But I think I’ve done enough damage for one day. I have to make sure I would never want to use nfs someday…