inetd

[John]

Cef wrote:

>On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 18:11, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 05:35:50PM +1000, Cef wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>The issue with doing this in Debian was that netbase depends on
>>>netkit-inetd, so it'll be installed anyway. So unless you don't
>>>consider /etc/services, /etc/protocols and /etc/rpc somewhat necessary to
>>>a networked system, this was a no-no.
>>>      
>>>
>>I will simply remove the dependency from netbase.  It isn't necessary for
>>our purposes..
>>    
>>
>
>I'd guess some packages may depend on netbase when they should really depend 
>on netkit-inetd. This could cause problems as detailed below:
>
>If /etc/inetd.conf isn't present (it's usually created in 
>netkit-inetd.preinst), update-inetd will fail away silently (no error or 
>errorlevel on exit), but any entries will not be written anywhere because the 
>file doesn't exist. This will be a pain if you install something then realise 
>it needs inetd, as you'll pretty much have to reinstall it. Installing of 
>packages won't fail because of this though, they just won't work as expected.
>
>In the end (after warty), update-inetd really belongs in netkit-inetd, and 
>anything at all that calls update-inetd needs to either handle not finding at 
>install. If it really needs inetd (ie: doesn't have it's own stand-alone 
>daemon mode),  it should depend upon netkit-inetd. I still think inetd 
>shouldn't run on boot either unless asked, as IMHO this should be a conscious 
>decision to enable it on the part of the machines owner.
>
>  
>
I personally prefer xinetd over inetd.
Has the group considered xinetd?
Does what you propose break xinetd?

Note that if xinetd were the standard super daemon, packages would
a) depend on it
b) Plonk their config file into /etc/xinetd.d
c) Not need scripts to run update-inetd or equivalent.

Seems to me a much nicer way to go for packagers, maintainers, sysadmins 
and those who want to hack on the superserver's  configuration.