Disabling unneeded services

Hi there,

As I've mentioned before, I wish there was a question during the Virtualmin installation process that asked what services the server admin wants Virtualmin to run. I don't use Virtualmin for DNS and mail, so all I want and need from Virtualmin are web and database servers. I don't need BIND or a complicated mail server system set up to send and receive mail; the only thing for which I need mail is for websites that send the occasional contact form submission or subscription confirmation email.

To be clear, I am NOT asking (as has been done many times before) for a way to run Virtualmin on multiple connected servers; I already run my mail server using a different system, and I am very happy with that system. I just want to use my Virtualmin server(s) for nothing but website hosting.

I just installed the GPL version for testing purposes in anticipation of moving my Pro installation to a new server, and used the "minimal" installation, not because the server is short on memory but to minimise the mail components that are installed. This is how I intend to install Virtualmin on my new Pro server. However, BIND is still there, and I'm sure more mail components than I really need.

My questions:

  1. How can I completely excise BIND from existence on the server and within Virtualmin/Webmin WITHOUT, of course, breaking Virtualmin and causing errors?
  2. What mail components can I deactivate and/or remove so that all that's left is the ability for example.com to send the occasional website-generated email?
  3. And if I didn't have as many of these components as "removed" or disabled as I'd like on the system I'm migrating FROM, how will backing up and re-importing the Virtualmin settings be affected after I've done the above on the target server?

Thanks in advance.

Craig

Status: 
Active

Comments

Howdy -- thanks for contacting us!

Some folks still like running BIND on their system, as it'll act as a local caching DNS server, which can speed up DNS lookups.

If that's not something you need though, while we don't recommend uninstalling it, you can certainly go into Webmin -> Servers -> Bootup and Shutdown, and you can disable it.

Also, be sure that it's also disabled in System Settings -> Features and Plugins.

You can also do the same for Mailman, ClamAV, and SpamAssassin.

As far as how all this will be handled during a migration -- I'm a bit fuzzy on that, but I believe what you'd get is a warning during the migration itself, warning you that the features are enabled in the backup, but disabled on the new system... and the features should then be disabled upon restore.

Worst case is that it could cause the option in Features and Plugins to be re-enabled, but I don't believe that's what Virtualmin would do. But after doing a restore you might double-check there to ensure it's still disabled.

Thanks Eric. That should help.