Virtualmin minimal install
Virtualmin staff made very easy to have a quick overview on what is going on with your server as you login.
Those panels are drag’n drop so you can rearrange them.
In this example we can see the virtual memory is 99% used, the server run 4 different PHP versions and a few mails services (this server is not used for mail).
Most of this comes from the "basic" installation and software that were auto-updated or added by me.
It is useful to notice that there is also is a Virtualmin minimal install option which is thinner for barebones servers, see it here.
Shutting down unused PHP versions
Back to our server, already we can work out some things by answering a few questions.
Do I need so many PHP version for the applications running on the servers.
In this case I use only Tiki website generator with 2 versions:
- Tiki 21 require PHP7.2.x
- Tiki 22 require PHP7.4.x
In both case I use PHP-FPM has from my experience it run Tiki much more faster. See: Difference between PHP-CGI and PHP-FPM. I will come back to this later... 😉
So as a first step I can turn off (clicking on the red ) the unused PHP servers and they will shutdown.
It will take a few second, just wait till the red line under the URL bar stop showing.
The service will stay down for THIS session only meaning that it will stay off until the server restart. So if you see that something is not working as expected you can just restart.
Shutting down permanently unused PHP versions
Once you check that everything you need work fine without those PHP servers running you can make the change more permanent so it doesn’t come back on each server restart.
On the top of your Virtualmin Admin menu, click on Webmin.
Click on the menu item "System", "Bootup and Shutdown" there you will find a list of the services you can activated during the server bootup.
In my case the PHP items goes by 2.
I select and check the relevant checkboxes to shutdown the PHP Version I don’t need and scroll at the bottom of the list and click on the "Disable on boot" button.
As we can see there is also an option to shutdown now and disable on boot so you can do it all from here if you are sure of what you do
After the process complete you can go back to the screen you were and you can check that the services you disabled are disable: red "No" on the "Start at boot?" column.
Shutting down unused mail server related software
While I’m here I see also some mail servers running.
In my case, not receiving or processing mail I can shutdown a part of the mail services but NOT ALL.
For my Tiki CMS I need to keep alive Postfix as it may be useful for sending email or system notifications.
In my case, I just don’t need to run Dovecot and SpamAssassin so using the same method I turn them off.
Once all done, check and re-check the graphics and statistics, your server should run smother. 😉