Xinetd resurrection

Steve Grubb sgrubb at redhat.com
Fri Sep 18 13:39:11 UTC 2009


On Friday 18 September 2009 08:34:03 am Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:24:18 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> > I also think that the reason xinetd came into existence in the first
> > place has long since passed. The original intent was to save memory
> > by not having half a dozen servers running. (Remember the early
> > 1990's systems.) Today we have plenty of memory in computers and the
> > reason for xinetd is gone.
> 
> I always thought that one reason for xinetd was the capability of running
> network servers without actually having any network code in the server.

Its network code, it just doesn't do listen/accept. :) Of course xinetd also 
takes care of restricting access a number of ways like time of day , network, 
tcp_wrappers, and setting up the uid/group...

Something I forgot to mention earlier, even though I give up any interest in 
xinetd, you should contact Rob Braun who is the maintainer and verify he has 
no more interest. I cannot speak for him.

Also, another bug that appears sometimes...xinetd has a builtin daytime 
service. It follows RFC867, which says there is no syntax for the daytime 
protocol and its use is for *debugging*. It also lists 2 popular formats. 
Xinetd follows one of the 2 listed, and HPUX / AIX (and likely others) follow 
the other one. If the RFC were better specified, there would be no conflict. 
Xinetd's daytime implementation goes back more than 10 years so its got a lot 
of history in its current format and should stay the default. So, maybe there 
should be a config option to specify one format or the other for 
interoperability.

-Steve




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