Which Linux User Processes Are Essential

[julianvb]

2018-08-08

I would like to know which of the following Linux user processes are essential and how I can find out their functions? By the way, this listing comes from my LM18.3 Sylvia machine with Linux kernel 4.4.0-131, a 64GB HDD and 2GB RAM. Thanks very much.

user-ps.jpg

julianvb

[Mute Ant]

"... Which User Processes Are Essential to Me..." Regular and frequent breathing has always been my number one favourite.

[trytip]

i have since switched to xfce in mint19 cinnamon because there are too many things running that don't need to. i can tell you what runs on my computer in cinnamon 19 but that may well be something entirely different on your computer. i disabled a lot of things some from the startup in cinnamon settings and some using systemctl mask ModemManager.service but that is picking things off the list that is in your systemd startup systemd-analyze blame which you can undo the option with systemctl unmask ModemManager.service

even so the cinnamon desktop is still too bloated for a low end computer with 2GB RAM and tries to load everything one might need and the kitchen sink.

unfortunately some of these services have other "workers" connecting to them so masking a service may break something like a .socket which probably makes no rational sense to you.

for starters what's the output of your systemd-analyze blame and what do you have enabled in settings startup?

[julianvb]

Hi, trylip,

Thanks very much. Here're my reports.

new-startup-apps.png

newblame-1.jpg

julianvb

[trytip]

i would disable mint update and upload in startup and start with:
systemctl mask ModemManager.service
and uninstall anything virtualbox in synaptic
don't know too much about systemd services but i just started masking things that seemed to pop out at me. like systemd-journal-flush.service BUT then you need rotate logs which i do with bleachbit. i wouldn't do any of this of course if i didn't have a snapshot with timeshift when things break.

but to tell you he truth even after masking and stopping services my RAM usage only went down about 100mb which now is around 630MB at startup in mint19 cinnamon.

open system monitor and search for csd how many do you have running? some of these can be stopped in etc/xdg/autostart/ the way i do it is compress for instance cinnamon-settings-daemon-automount.desktop to back it up and then delete the automount which is pretty useless function for me

[julianvb]

trylip,

'inxi -F' now shows my typical startup RAM usage as 341MB from my previous typical value of 531MB, a drop of about 200MB, after I implemented all your suggestions except the last one involving cinnamon-settings-daemon-automount.desktop.

By the way, virtualbox was not installed according to synaptic. 'systemd-analyze blame' shows a slight improvement per my attachment here due to the above changes.

new-blame.png

Thanks very much.
julianvb

[DAMIEN1307]

hi julian...i noticed in your readout that there is a virtualbox-guest entry in the list...if you are not going to run "wine" "playonlinux" or any other windows type emulators, then you can run these commands as well...you can also remove ndiswrapper as well unless you need some sort of win xp legacy network device...DAMIEN


Purge ndiswrapper

sudo apt purge ndiswrapper


Mono/Orca Removal

sudo apt purge mono-runtime-common gnome-orca virtualbox-guest*


Purge Virtualbox

sudo apt purge virtualbox*

[julianvb]

hi julian...i noticed in your readout that there is a virtualbox-guest entry in the list...if you are not going to run "wine" "playonlinux" or any other windows type emulators, then you can run these commands as well...you can also remove ndiswrapper as well unless you need some sort of win xp legacy network device...DAMIEN

Purge ndiswrapper
sudo apt purge ndiswrapper

Mono/Orca Removal
sudo apt purge mono-runtime-common gnome-orca virtualbox-guest*

Purge Virtualbox
sudo apt purge virtualbox*

DAMEN,
Thank you so much for your sharp and very helpful observation. I'll purge the above 3 items and report back asap. I haven't used ndiswrapper for at least 5 years since most of my wireless adapters are Linux-compatible.
julianvb

[julianvb]

DAMEN

Purge ndiswrapper
sudo apt purge ndiswrapper

Mono/Orca Removal
sudo apt purge mono-runtime-common gnome-orca virtualbox-guest*

Purge Virtualbox
sudo apt purge virtualbox*

I successfully purged ndiswrapper, but the system indicated that virtualbox was not installed and that it could not locate the 'virtual-guest' package.
Post-reboot RAM usage remains about the same as before, namely 344 MB out of 2GB. Thanks very much again.

julianvb

[julianvb]

DAMEN,

What can I do with the following big RAM eaters revealed by 'htop -u jul'?

aug35-htop-u-jul.png

I apologize for the blurry picture due to this websize's restrictions on uploaded image files. The entries are 'cinnamon --replace', 'nemo-desktop', 'nxnode' and 'cinnamon-screensaver'.

julianvb

[trytip]

if you open system monitor and search for "virtual" is there any service that is running? my OCD would really want that virtualbox-guest-utils.service from showing up on my systemd-analyze blame if i don't use virtualbox.

you can also systemctl mask speech-dispatcher.service

ps: when you mask something there is a link created in /etc/systemd/system/ if you right click properties on a link in there and it says Link Target /dev/null that means it is masked

[julianvb]

If you open system monitor and search for "virtual" is there any service that is running? my OCD would really want that virtualbox-guest-utils.service from showing up on my systemd-analyze blame if i don't use virtualbox.

you can also systemctl mask speech-dispatcher.service

ps: when you mask something there is a link created in /etc/systemd/system/ if you right click properties on a link in there and it says Link Target /dev/null that means it is masked .

Hi, trylip,

Code: Select all

systemd-analyze blame | grep -i 'virtual' 

outputs : 1.229s virtualbox-guest-utils.service

Code: Select all

systemctl mask speech-dispatch.service

yields : Created symlink from /etc/systemctl/speech-dispatch.service to /dev/null/

Yes, right-clicking properties of speech-dispatch.service in /etc/systemd/system/ confirms that the file is linked to /dev/null/.

Once again, many thanks for your generous help and a lesson on system services.

Julianvb

[DAMIEN1307]

hi julian...one other thing i noticed in the "signature" portion at bottom of your posts...are you still running those kernels on both of your machines ?...they are now end of life (eol) kernels...you might want to consider updating your kernels to either the 4.4 series or the 4.15 series which are both LTS kernels, meaning they will still be supported...just a thought...DAMIEN

[trytip]

remember that if you mask a service and need it again to systemctl unmask speech-dispatch.service which will remove the link in /etc/systemd/system/
and do be careful with systemd some services have other small .target or .socket that also needs to be disabled.

tip: when you boot and once the mint logo appears use ESC and this will tell you if anything is wrong if you see any RED entries something is bad. use gnome-logs to see these errors they will be in the Important tab

[julianvb]

DAMEN,
I've just updated my signature. When I get a chance, I'll replace my second machine's kernel with the 4.4 series.
Thanks very much for reminding me.
julianvb

[julianvb]

trylip,

by trytip » Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:57 pm
remember that if you mask a service and need it again to systemctl unmask speech-dispatch.service which will remove the link in /etc/systemd/system/
and do be careful with systemd some services have other small .target or .socket that also needs to be disabled.

tip: when you boot and once the mint logo appears use ESC and this will tell you if anything is wrong if you see any RED entries something is bad. use gnome-logs to see these errors they will be in the Important tab

Thank you so much for pointing out the fine points on Linux services. I'll certainly bear them in mind.
julianvb