If you have a Linux Cloud Server with Rackspace, you may notice a couple extra processes that might not exist on a stock build of that distro on physical hardware. For example, here’s what’s in /etc/rc3.d/ on a fresh Debian build:
# ls -l /etc/rc3.d/ total 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 677 Jan 1 2011 README lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 May 2 2011 S01rsyslog -> ../init.d/rsyslog lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 May 2 2011 S01sudo -> ../init.d/sudo lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 May 3 2011 S01xe-linux-distribution -> ../init.d/xe-linux-distribution lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 May 2 2011 S02acpid -> ../init.d/acpid lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 May 2 2011 S02cron -> ../init.d/cron lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jul 20 2011 S02nova-agent -> ../init.d/nova-agent lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 2 2011 S02ssh -> ../init.d/ssh lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 May 2 2011 S03bootlogs -> ../init.d/bootlogs lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 May 2 2011 S04rc.local -> ../init.d/rc.local lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 May 2 2011 S04rmnologin -> ../init.d/rmnologin lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 May 2 2011 S04stop-bootlogd -> ../init.d/stop-bootlogd
The two extra items here are xe-linux-distribution and nova-agent, which are essential for the cloud part of your Rackspace server to function correctly. Otherwise you pretty much just have a VM. The goal of this guide is to give an overview on what these two services do, common things that can go wrong with them, and how to fix it. Read more »