Question about ModemManager and udisks2 on Ubuntu Server
Ubuntu Version:
24.04 LTS
Desktop Environment (if applicable):
GNOME.
Problem Description:
I have a question regarding the default presence and necessity of the ModemManager and udisks2 services on Ubuntu Server installations.
Is there any official guidance or recommendation from Ubuntu/Canonical regarding running ModemManager and udisks2 in server environments where cellular modems or removable storage devices are not in use?
Are there any known security or stability implications, or best practices, for disabling or removing these services from a production server?
Thank you for your assistance and any documentation or references you can provide.
Hey, good question. From my experience with Ubuntu Server, I’d leave both services alone.
udisks2 is wired into GNOME’s storage stack — even if you’re not plugging in USB drives, the desktop environment and some admin tools expect it to be there. Removing it tends to cause weird, hard-to-trace issues down the line.
ModemManager is similar — it gets pulled in as a dependency by other packages (firmware-related stuff mostly), so yanking it out can silently break things during upgrades.
Neither of them is a real security concern in a standard server setup. If they’re not managing any active device, they’re basically just sitting idle. The risk of breaking something by removing them is way higher than any benefit you’d get.
My advice: leave them running, focus your hardening efforts on firewall rules, SSH config, and access controls — that’s where it actually matters.
You should not remove these services. The official and safest approach is to leave the default system components in place to ensure your server remains in a supported and predictable state.
Note: I used AI assistance to help formulate this answer and verified the information before posting.
Ubuntu is Community Supported, so most answers here will be from your peer users, not from the development team. Any “official guidance” would be in the documentation you already searched.
Generally, when developers do contribute to Support topics, their advice is usually along the lines of “The default is what we did most of our testing upon, so that’s what we recommend using.”
Ubuntu is Open Source software; you are welcome to try toggling those services to see if it impacts your connectivity, and report your findings to the community.