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Re: [LUG] server processes

 

On Sun, 18 May 2008 11:03:01 +0100
Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sun, 2008-05-18 at 10:46 +0100, Neil Winchurst wrote:
> > One thing I have never worked out in Linux. When I log in there are
> > various programs that start automatically. If I do ps -e I can see a
> > list of what is running.
> 
> Programs related to your desktop environment are tracked via the various
> Preferences settings of that environment, System->Preferences->Sessions
> in GNOME. These include applets and other GUI stuff.
> 
> > Is there some way of removing a program from this list so that it
> > does not start at log in? I am thinking of something like mysql which
> > I use sometimes but not every time I log in.
> 
> MySQL is actually running all the time - it isn't started at login, it
> is started at boot, it is just that you can't see it without logging in
> (either directly or via SSH etc.)
> 
> >  I do not necessarily
> > want such programs to be running all the time in the background in
> > case I want to use them.
> 
> If you are running a website on that box, you will need it all the time
> in the background if the website needs SQL data. MySQL exists as a
> server to support server-type operations - running websites and other
> applications that can be queried remotely. i.e. LAMP - Linux, Apache and
> MySQL need to always be running (PHP/Perl are special cases that are
> called on-demand).
> 
> Starting mysql each time is quite a bit of overhead - mysql is designed
> to run in the background and does various clean-up tasks in idle time.
> 
> Server processes are dictated by the /etc/init.d files and relevant
> runlevel symlinks in /etc/rc*.d/ - configured by root and controllable
> using 'sudo invoke-rc.d prog start|stop|restart' etc.
> 
> You probably don't actually want to stop mysql from behaving as a server
> - if you don't want a database acting as a server, uninstall mysql and
> use SQLite instead. The amount of overhead of a background mysql process
> is tiny - until you start running queries.
> 
> If you need to temporarily stop mysql, use invoke-rc.d
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Neil Williams
Thanks for all that info. Mysql was a bad example. I should have
suggested something like zattoo which I would not want to run very
often. Rather than have it running in the background all the time I
would start it up manually whenever I wanted to use it. Is that a
better example please?

Neil Winchurst

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