SGI IRIX chkconfig
- Controlling Services

 General Information

Introduction

IRIX has a wonderful tool for activating an ddeactivating daemons and some other features: A little program called chkconfig. Here I want to show you how to use this program, which is fairly easy, and give a short description of most services that may be running in your system

Using chkconfig

Using chkconfig is really fairly easy. If you simply type in chkconfig, you will see a list of all activated daemons and services, like this

Octane# chkconfig
        Flag                 State
        ====                 =====

        appletalk            off
        array                off
        autoconfig_ipaddress off
        desktop              on
        esp                  off
        fcagent              off
        fontserver           off
        gated                off
        ipaliases            on
        lp                   off
        mediad               on
        miser                off
        ...etc...
        xdm                  on

You can also find out if a single service is running (this might be useful for scripts) by typing chkconfig [service]. This command will return status 0 or 1 indicating if the specified option is activated or not.

Last but not least you can turn on and off a service or option by typing chkconfig [service] [on/off].

Overview of Services

Option Details
4DDN Initialize 4DDN (DECnet connectivity) software.
acct Start process accounting.

appletalk

 Enable aplletalk networking
array Enable array services daemon
autoconfig_ipaddress,
auto_ipaddress 		Enable dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) as a client.
automount Start the NFS automounter daemon.
desktop If off, fewer of the IRIX Interactive Desktop user interface features are enabled, and typically a different toolchest menu is used. It is identical to creating the file $HOME/.disableDesktop except that it applies to all accounts. The specific effect is that the desktop version of Xsession (/usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession.dt) is not run upon login, and therefore programs started from that file are not run or are run with different options.
esp

Enable Embedded Support Partner.

The Embedded Support Partner consists of a set of daemons that perform various monitoring activities. These include an event monitoring and management daemon and database daemon.

fcagent Enable FibreVault Status/Configuration daemon
fontserver Start the X11R6 font server daemon.
gated Start the Cornell routing daemon instead of the BSD routed.
hypernet Initialize HyperNET controller and routes.
ipaliases  
ipfilterd Enable the Silicon Graphics IP Packet Filtering daemon.
jserver Start Japanese convert engine if the optional product Japanese Language Module is installed.
lockd Start the NFS lock and status daemons.
lp Start/stop printing daemon.
mediad Start the removable media daemon.
miser Start the miser daemon. Miser is a deterministic batch scheduling facility that can be used to balance batch and interactive cpu and memory usage.
mrouted Start the IP multicast routing daemon (useful only on gateways).
named Start Internet domain name server.
nds Enable network dual-head software daemon for Octanes in Dual-Head configurations
network Allow incoming and outgoing network traffic. This flag can be set off if you need to isolate the machine from the network without removing cables.
netwr_client  
nfs Start the NFS daemons nfsd and biod. Mount all NFS filesystems.
noiconlogin Do not show user icons on the login screen.
nostickytmp Do not turn the sticky bit on for the directories /tmp and /var/tmp.
ns_admin  
nsd Enable UNS name service daemon
nsr Start up the IRIS NetWorker daemons.
nss_fasttrack Start/Stop Netscape FastTrack Server
pcnfsd Start the PC-NFS server daemon.
pmcd Start the Performance Metrics Collector Daemon.
pmie Start the Performance Metrics Inference Engines.
privileges Enable privileges to be used on the system.
proclaim_relayagent Enable relaying for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
proclaim_server Enable server for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
quickpage Enable SNPP client/server for sending messages to an alpha-numeric pager.
quotacheck Run quotacheck on the filesystems that have quotas enabled.
quotas Enable quotas for local configured filesystems.
rarpd Start the Reverse ARP daemon.
routed Start the 4.3BSD RIP routing daemon.
rsvpd Start the Resource ReSerVations Protocol daemon daemon.
rtmond Start system event monitoring daemon
rwhod Start the 4.3BSD rwho daemon.
sar Start the system activity reporter.
savecore Enable the saving of kernel crash images. Some information is saved in /var/adm/crash even if saving is disabled.
sdpd  
sendmail Start sendmail daemon.
sendmail_cf  
sesdaemon Start Fibre Channel Drive Enclosure Status/Configuration daemon
snetd Start DLPI network daemon for STREAMS networks.
snmpd Start the Simple Network Management Protocol daemon.
soundscheme Start the IRIX Interactive Desktop audio cue daemon.
sysevent Start System Log Event Capture System Daemon
timed Start the 4.3BSD time synchronization daemon.
timeslave Start the Silicon Graphics time synchronization daemon.
ts Start Tape support Daemon
verbose Print the names of daemons as they are started.
videod Enable the video daemon. Used by video devices such as vino.
visuallogin Enable the visual login screen.
vswap  
webface  
webface_apache  
windowsystem Start the X window system. If windowsystem is off, it is necessary to modify the inittab file to enable getty on the textport window if you wish to use graphics as a dumb terminal.

The recommended means of enabling and disabling the window system are the commands startgfx and stopgfx.
xdm Start the X display manager.
xinerama Enable Xinerama extension of the X server.
yp, ypserv, ypmaster client, slave and master NIS respectively

In order to conserve memory and improve performance, you may want to disable some of the running daemons. But be careful, some of these daemons and options are almost lethal to a fully working system! The following daemons should only be turned off when you really know what you ware doing.

Daemon Why you want to keep it running
xdm,
windowsystem		 You need these daemons for the graphical user interface and X11 server.
network You should keep this running for any networking experience.
desktop,
soundscheme 		This enables the Indigo Magic Desktop
nsd The name service daemon is needed for resolving hostnames to IP-addresses
mediad  

There are other daemons that might make sense depending on your hardware configuration and networking environment.

Daemon When should it be started
routed  
mrouted  
rarpd  
gated  
autoconfig_ipaddress  
nss_fasttrack  
videod  
ts  
sendmail  
timed  
appletalk  
lp  

 
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