Gregory Stark wrote:
"Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
resources. Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
overkill. Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)
That's kind of the crux of it. X sessions tend to do things like run 3d screen
savers, periodically check cdrom drives for new disks, periodically wake up to
update load graphs or network graphs, etc.
Spent a happy afternoon some years ago trying to figure out why an NT
server would be fine while I was checking its settings, but would seem
to crawl after half an hour.
Turned out it had some funky 3D screensaver enabled - it'd grind to a
halt, I'd come up, hit the spacebar and not find anything slowing the
system down. Obvious once, I'd got the system monitoring turned on, but
PITA until then.
Moral: If it's not doing something immediately useful, I don't want it
running on my server.
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd
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