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 »