Removing unneeded modules

[Jeff]

When I am commissioning a new server, one of the first things I do is look around and pare off things that I do not think will be needed. For example, most of my clients have separate email servers, so when a CentOS server comes with Dovecot already installed, I remove it. The same goes for the typical Apache install. Usually it is configured to use a bunch of useless (to me) modules. Here is an example of a bunch I commented out of an httpd.conf file recently:

#LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so
#LoadModule authnz_ldap_module modules/mod_authnz_ldap.so
#LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so
#LoadModule ext_filter_module modules/mod_ext_filter.so
#LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so
#LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so
#LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
#LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so
#LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
#LoadModule proxy_balancer_module 
#LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so
#LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
#LoadModule proxy_connect_module

Every server requirement is different so this takes some testing. Most of the time it is as simple as running a config test after you comment out a module:

service httpd configtest

You may want to research each module you want to disable to make sure it isn't anything you might need. You can shave off the amount of RAM each process uses by reducing these included modules.