On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Mark Komarinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Since each application can have its own configuration file,
> it's easier (and safer) to just create/blow away the config
> files for each service instead of editing /etc/inetd.conf directly.
On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Dan Jenkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> xinetd uses a different config file format than inetd. It has a number
> of nice features, but I'm real comfortable with inetd, so I haven't
> switched. xinetd is the default for RedHat 7.0 and Mandrake 7.2. I might
> switch later after I've used it more.
I have no problem with xinetd being a better and more powerful superset
of inetd. It looks very good. I was wearing my "compatibility hat" when
I made my remark.
That is to say, saving 100,000 system administrators 5-10 minutes each
by having 1 developer code for 30 minutes total is nothing to sneeze at!
I downloaded the xinetd source code and took a peek at it. It is true
the xinetd.conf syntax is different and looks like:
service <name> {
key = value
...
}
but since the keys are a superset of the old inetd values it
seems a well-crafted sscanf(3) call could quickly tranlate an old
inetd.conf line to the new syntax before handing off to the parser.
So I'm guessing 30 lines of code tops to support the old inetd.conf
syntax...
Poking around some more in the source I see in xinetd/options.c there
is a "-inet-compat" switch that is not documented in the man page. So
now 5 lines of code change to support the old syntax by default :-)
The author seems to be on the right track. Shame on Redhat for not
doing the tiny tweak and saving the admins some time and brain cells.
It is good to improve a tool like the inetd service. But to *force*
everybody to immediately change over to a new syntax is uncool IMHO.
We've seen this in ipfwadm -> ipchains and now ipchains -> iptables and
elsewhere.
Karl
> On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Karl J. Runge wrote:
> >
> > Is there a good reason xinetd (at least from redhat) doesn't install
> > its binary into /usr/sbin/inetd and read its config file from
> > /etc/inetd.conf? Shouldn't it be a superset of the std Unix inetd? (e.g.
> > the netkit one) What a pain for admins if it isn't...
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