xfs running with no x session

[Rick Stevens]

Bruce McDonald wrote:
> Hello Rick
> 
> On 21-May-04, you wrote:
> 
> 
>>Bruce McDonald wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
> 
> 
>>>I was just checking what services were listening to ports on my machine
>>>and noticed that xfs (the font server, not the filesystem) was listening.
>>>Is this normal behaviour when there is not an x session running?
> 
> 
>>Yes, but it should be running on a local Unix-domain socket, not over
>>TCP/IP.
> 
> 
> It is running on a Unix socket.  Having sent the previous question I figured
> that it must listen for X to start and then call the font server.  It is
> good to be sure though.  

Actually it's quite the opposite.  X depends on having xfs handle fonts
for it, but xfs is not dependent on X in any way beyond X's font
directories.

If you might run the X server, leave xfs running.  If you never use
X (e.g. a headless server), you can disable xfs if you wish.  It's a
pretty lightweight process and really doesn't do anything unless it
gets a request on its socket.  In other words, it's not a huge penalty.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   Which is worse: ignorance or apathy?  I don't know.  Who cares?  -
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