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I want to know why the named daemon is running, do I need it running for my VPS to work properly ?

Can I stop or remove it ?

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/usr/sbin/named is provided by the bind9 package. bind9 is a DNS server. If this is a VPS, it's quite possible you need that package. But you can probably remove it and see what happens, and then put it back if you need it.

sudo apt-get remove bind9

The removal might want to remove other packages, including quite important ones for you. So make sure to pay attention to that before proceeding with the removal. This may also reveal why bind9 is installed--it may be a dependency of other packages that you are using.

Please note that I'm not saying you should be doing this--only that you probably can, if you want. If you do this, then even if the server stops working properly, you'll probably still be able to access the Internet to download and reinstall the package. However, it's possible that you will not be able to, or that you will not be able to re-SSH to the server if your connection gets broken. (Thanks to tgm4883 for pointing this out.)

You can substantially mitigate the risk of problems by making sure you have the necessary .deb files cached to reinstall bind9 and its dependencies:

sudo apt-get --download-only --reinstall install bind9

If you've run that recently, and not run sudo apt-get clean since, then you should be able to reinstall bind9 even if you cannot connect to the Ubuntu download servers after removing it:

sudo apt-get install bind9

You may need to run sudo apt-get update before either of the above two commands.

If you don't want to remove bind9 at all, but just see what would be removed if you did (which may reveal why it's installed), you can simulate its removal:

apt-get -s remove bind9
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  • While I agree with everything in this answer, if he removes the service in question (bind9) then he might not be able to reinstall it (since he's removing the DNS server it may not be able to resolve the repositories and redownload the package)
    – tgm4883
    Jul 11, 2012 at 13:31
  • @tgm4883 That's possible. It seems unlikely, since the system would still have a DNS client and the ability to access whatever DNS services it uses. However, you're right in that there's no reason for my answer not to explain how to avoid this problem (it's easily avoided). I'll edit.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Jul 11, 2012 at 13:33
  • I stopped bind, had no problems and on @Sathya 's suggestion removed it. No problems watsoever.
    – HackToHell
    Jul 11, 2012 at 13:39
  • @EliahKagan, that is true, although I don't see why it would be setup as a DNS server and then the DNS client not use itself (since it's a DNS server) for name resolutions. It appears though that was the case and all is resolved :)
    – tgm4883
    Jul 11, 2012 at 16:38

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