DepreTux wrote:You can disable cron and anacron using rcconf.
Better not... without a good understanding of what they do.
A slightly better alternative is to go through all the crontab files (are they still called that?) and take out the things that you don't want to happen. Still, an experienced administrator would do this only with great care. Linux is configurable: that does not mean it is good to abuse it!
And you can kill find with "sudo killall -9 find".
Good luck!
The jobs that you might leave half done could be more trouble.
All this sort of advice I greet with an EEEK! It is not what we know that counts, it is what we do not know.
But hey, I did not choose my Unix career, I had it thrust upon me, and I did my learning on a live, commercial system, which was, at times, deeply embarrassing!
There is nothing like having 40 people waiting for you to find and fix your mistake!
Just one thing: before changing any system file, make a copy of it, and always make sure that you have the original copy by using a naming convention like copy.0, copy.1, copy.2 etc. It's essential to be able to go back to square one, but it is nice to be able to back up step by step too.
And one more thing: have a back of of your root file system, separate to any data. It is sooo much easier than having to do a reinstall followed by all the tweaks and changes some of which one can't even remember!