Disable yum-updatesd for better performance
On a base server install for Centos 5.2, yum-updatesd is included and it seems like a fairly good idea to keep that running (keeps you updated). Not so and it’s safe to disable this (kill the process and disable it from starting up in the first place.
Here’s the process, I noticed an immediate speed increase in my VPS when I disabled it (among a few other thing like avahi):
/usr/bin/python -tt /usr/sbin/yum-updatesd