Problem :
I have a netbook running opensuse 11.2 I’m trying to make it run faster by disabling services, and I would like to kill off postfix as I don’t ever use it (As far as i actually know) What harm could come from disabling postfix, if any? (I don’t use any kind of email programs on it, all web based)
Solution :
Postfix is not slowing your netbook down in the first place, so while there’s probably not a great deal of harm, there is no benefit either. Use htop to identify the actual processes that are using CPU and RAM.
I run Ubuntu on a netbook, and once I upgraded to 1GB of RAM it ran reasonably fast. One suspects that RAM shortage is the bottleneck for most netbooks.
Some programs alert the administrative user of problems via email – but if you check your logs on a regular basis this should not be an issue.
Another thing to consider is the possibility that a program that wants to notify an administrator may abort without finishing if it fails to email (this is hypothetical though).
Note that fetchmail may send messages to port 25 (which postfix usually monitors). If you are not using this mail retriever, then you do not need postfix running.