“My previous article covered how to add and remove services from
various run levels within the Red Hat distribution of Linux. In
this installment of Ask the Geek, I will talk about what these
services do and how to decide whether or not you need them.
I’ll also introduce the new Ask the Geek discussion.”
“As noted in the previous article on chkconfig with Linux you
can enable or disable certain services. You can also modify the run
level in which a given service will start. For example, if you
don’t need a service during normal startup, but you do want it when
you disconnect your laptop from its power supply, you can set the
service to start at run level 4. When you are ready to use the
service, just switch levels with the init command. The question
still remains, though, as to what services should and should not be
started.”
“This is particularly important with Red Hat Linux, because Red
Hat starts all services by default. This is a bad way of doing
things; it takes up resources and can pose a security risk for
those who don’t know how to lock down a Linux machine.”