Many students may think that the following topic is small and "not a big deal". Those students may say, '''"How hard is running and stopping services?"'''

The process may not be hard, but knowing how to stop, start, restart and check the status of services is absolutely critical to a Linux server. '''Aside from learning to trouble-shoot problems ''' by checking the status of running services, '''understanding how to manage services is critical to help protect a Linux server from penetration ''' (this term is referred to as "'''Hardening a system'''"). Sometimes it is "what we don't know" that can harm us. One key element in hardening a computer system is to disable non essential networkng services to allow IDSs ('''Intrusion Detection Systems''') to focus on a narrower range of policy violations. Learning to monitor the status, enable and disable networking services underlies the '''Backtrax''' motto:<br><br>'''"The quieter you are, then more you will hear..."'''