In article <op.ydn26ms65znmjo@fennec>, Morgan ``indrora'' Gangwere <morgan.gangw...@gmail.com> wrote: > >targeted at christos mostly. > >I saw the GSOC posting that inetd needs some love. > >About me: I'm a student at the University of New Mexico. I'm not afraid to >dig my hands into a codebase and fix things, add things or otherwise get >work done. My projects have primarily been "Take this existing thing and >fix this annoyance with it". I've gotten my hands into a variety of BSDs >and *nixes (I even experimented with NetBSD back when I was using a Zaurus >for a while). I maintain a tiny linux container to get used to small >environments at < zaibatsutel.net > > >I have a (vaguely) self-serving reason to work on inetd: I use it. In >several simple systems, I use NetBSD's inetd to serve simple shell-script >based services. > >I think the per-service configuration might be the first thing to handle, >however. At the moment, the "best" way to implement adding configuration >for rate-limiting and friends would be to hijack part of inetd.conf >(probably adding options to proto, making config syntax something like >"tcp4,limit=10,20" for 10 invocations in 20 seconds, and potentially to >progname, meaning ssh,prefork=2 would keep 2 children waiting). On one >hand, it's historically consistent: adding more options is a time-honored >tradition. On the other hand, it's starting to show its age. Potentially >making /etc/inetd/(service).conf or /etc/inetd.rc hold things is a better >idea? I'd like to see what old UNIX admins with graying beards have to say.
Yes, I think that a per-service file with better syntax is probably the way to go. I think that it is not worth enhancing more the existing syntax. If you need new features, use the new way. Perhaps have a /etc/inetd directory for the system services and a /var/inetd for the user requested ones. >On a process related note, I have a few questions: > > * Where can I find a style guide? (Obviously, I want^H^H^H^H need to keep >my contributions in KNF) http://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/share/misc/style > * I'm not totally familiar with working outside pkgsrc -- Is there a >wikipage on building the system bits of netbsd? You can check out the source tree and then run a build using build.sh. This works on non-netbsd systems too. There is a BUILDING file in the top level directory > * What sort of work has been done on inetd in the past? You mean by other OS's? The other thing to look at is launchd which is a superset of the inetd functionality (supporting dependencies etc.) Perhaps even replacing inetd with launchd. > * What sort of plan does the NetBSD project have for the future? For inetd or in general? See above. >I've noticed that a lot of tools in usr/sbin are kept in big, monolithic >slabs. I understand this is because of historical reasons, but is there >any plan to move ahead? Would inetd be a good place to start splitting up >these hulking 2k sloc behemoths? Give some examples of which you would like to split and into what... christos
