[olug] to X or not to X (on a server)?

[Brian Wiese]

On Fri, 9 May 2003 05:15:41 -0500
Kenton Brede <xyf at nixnotes.org> wrote:

|On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 06:05:37AM -0500, Brian Wiese wrote:
|> So, my friend and I where having this little discussion about setting
|> up a debian stable server for basically samba file and print serving. 
|> He says X should not ever be installed and I say it should.  What do
|> the fellow gnu/linux admins on the list recommend from experience...
|> which has more benefit, to install X on a server or to not?  hard drive
|> space is not a concern.
|> 
|> reasons for X:
|> - provides productive usable environment for local system
|> administration(I like to have a couple of terminal windows open and
|> other GUI tools at hand (a webbrowser perhaps) when administrating a
|> system versus straight CLI)- will not be used/running normally,
|> standard runlevel = 2- could easily be uninstalled with 'apt-get remove
|> --purge xserver-common...'- security updates go along with 'apt-get
|> upgrade' so not much of a concern (and there are no remote shell
|> logins, just IT staff)
|> 
|> reasons against X:
|> - another piece of software installed that could be a security
|> vulnerability- added difficulty for system backups?
|> - performance benefit by not being installed?
|> 
|> so, to have the option of X or to not on a server, what's best?
|
|I can't say absolutely X should never be installed on a server but I
|haven't seen a reason to do so yet.  A few reasons why I wouldn't:
|
|* Possible security vulnerability that must be dealt with.
|
|* Don't have to track and install security updates for X and all the
|  stuff installed with it.
|
|* During your career you will more than likely find yourself in an 
|  environment mostly without a graphical interface.  Relying on X doesn't
|  prepare you for that. 
|
|* Most of the crashes / freezes I have personally seen on linux systems 
|  have happened while running X. 
|
|* Running a graphical browser on a server isn't a good idea due to
|  the inevitable runaway processes that occur while surfing.  
| 
|kent

Yeah, this is kind of the same mentality I've had all along.  My own
webserver has been up for more than 2 separate ocassions of 210+ days of
uptime over the past 1 1/2 years (recently had to replace UPS for last
downtime)... and since it's all remotely managed/old slow system, I've
never installed X on it, just ssh.  If I have a local server though, and
therefore almost always hooked into a kvm somewhere, I go ahead and
install X though and just run it when I need it.  I personally find that
the functionality benefit of admin' a box from an X environment far
outways any other valid/potential concerns. (to copy and paste, have
multiple xterms/konsoles/... of an extremely large/custom screen size and
run a browser on localhost for testing etc, it's what graphic environments
are for - do interact with the system more usefully...)  It's another one
of those personal admin choices I assume, but it is nice to not 'have to'
run it all the time (like in Windoze) and have the option to unistall it
or turn it off at will without loosing major functionality on the system.

peace

  Brian Wiese | bwiese at cotse.com | aim: unolinuxguru
------------------------------------------------------
  GnuPG/PGP key 0x6BFF6681 | "FREEDOM!" - Braveheart 
------------------------------------------------------  
This is not about Napster or DVDs. It's about your Freedom.
  I'll see your DMCA and raise you a First Amendment.
              http://www.anti-dmca.org