topic disabling unnecessary startup scripts in Operating System - HP-UX

disabling unnecessary startup scripts

S.S. — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:30:47 GMT

Hi All,

Could you please help me how to disable unnecessary HPUX startup scripts. This is a part of our Auditing.

Here are the following details:

OS: HP-UX B.11.11
Model: 9000/800/rp8440

Kindly let me know if you need further input.

Thanks to all in advance for responding to this thread.

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Vivek Bhatia — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:46:34 GMT

Hi Vankadara,

1. If you want to disable a script in /etc/rc.config.d/

For example:
if you want to disable cron, which is a startup service in /sbin/rc.2d/S270cron

a. change the value to CRON=0 in /etc/rc.config.d/cron or remove the startup script from /sbin/rc2.d/S270cron script from its location.

-Vivek

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Johnson Punniyalingam — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:46:47 GMT

still not enough details.

in this case would request more info from "Auditor" if have any standard procedure or template as per your current organisation can follow, normally we d'not stop ant startup scripts in HPUX

may be some services

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

S.S. — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:57:14 GMT

Auditors have send the following details to disable the unnecessary services.

The following is a list of default startup scripts that could be disabled unless required:

In directory /etc/rc2.d:

No. Script Name Comments
1 S20sysetup Print the system configuration upon startup
2 S47asppp Starts the PPP daemon
3 S70uucp Cleans up uucp lock files
4 S71ldap.client Starts ldap_cachemgr
5 S72autoinstall Auto mount (generally used for NIS, NIS+).
6 S73nfs.client Start lockd and statd;mount remote file systems
7 S74autofs Start the automounter daemon
8 S76nscd Start up the name service cache daemon
9 S80PRESERVE Recovers data from unsaved vi sessions
10 S80spc SunSoft Print - Client
11 S80lp Start the line printer scheduler
12 S85power Power management
13 S88sendmail Sendmail daemon
14 S73cachefs.daemon, S93cacheos.finish Starts up cachefs file systems

In directory /etc/rc3.d:

No. Script Name Comments
1 S15nfs.server Startup remote file sharing daemons
2 S50apache Startup http daemon
3 S76snmpdx, S77dmi Startup snmp

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Steven Schweda — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:17:10 GMT

> Could you please help me how to disable
> unnecessary HPUX startup scripts. [...]

How should we know which scripts are
"unnecessary" in your environment?

> The following is a list of default startup
> scripts that could be disabled unless
> required:

That's great. How should we know what's
"required" in your environment?

> 6 S73nfs.client Start lockd and statd;mount remote file systems
> 7 S74autofs Start the automounter daemon

> 1 S15nfs.server Startup remote file sharing daemons

Are you using NFS or not? How should I know?

Many of these scripts do approximately
nothing if some service is not configured, so
it really matters little if the script is run
or not.

Perhaps you should disable all of them, see
what stops working, and then re-enable what
you need.

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Johnson Punniyalingam — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:21:38 GMT

Above shown information, very good and clear

the file you mentioned are soft link file under

rc2 & rc3,

easy way to rename softlink inference

Example :-

mv S88sendmail s88sendmail

or you can edit the NFS client startup file
set VALUE=1 to 0 so it won't startup

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Matti_Kurkela — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:28:45 GMT

> In directory /etc/rc2.d:

> 10 S80spc SunSoft Print - Client

> In directory /etc/rc3.d:

Wait a second. In HP-UX, the directories are different: the rcN.d directories are located in /sbin, not in /etc. Also the symlink naming scheme typically uses three numbers, not two. And "SunSoft Print - Client" is definitely not standard part of the HP-UX operating system.

Your auditors have probably given you a Sun Solaris list instead of a HP-UX one.

In HP-UX, the standard way to disable unnecessary services is to edit the appropriate configuration variables in /etc/rc.config.d/* files, causing the unnecessary scripts to be skipped.

If you change any of the standard scripts in /sbin/init.d or the standard links in /sbin/rc?.d directories, your changes may be overwritten when you next install a HP-UX patch that includes fixes for startup scripts. As a consequence, a service that you have disabled by changing the links might become re-enabled without any notice.

If your auditors don't know this, I think their HP-UX knowledge is clearly insufficient for the auditing job.

I see their list also suggests disabling the power management. This might cause the system to consume more power than necessary, producing more heat and thus requiring more cooling. As the companies today may/should be trying to be reducing their carbon footprint and be more eco-friendly in general, this advice may actually be somewhat harmful to the company's objectives.

MK

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

Canon_3 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:47:13 GMT

Thanks all.

Specially thanks to MK for your detailed explanation.

Re: disabling unnecessary startup scripts

S.S. — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:32:53 GMT

Thanks all.

Specially thanks to MK for your detailed explanation.