Pros and Cons of running under inetd....

[Eric Schuele]

Derek Ragona wrote:
> Yes it is still true today.  The default system now has inetd running 
> nothing.  And the ports now install rc scripts for these reasons.
> 

Not arguing here... everything I've found on the web says something similar.

But why do we have inetd?  I assume it solved a problem in the past, 
that no longer exists.  Not to mention its spotted security history.

> For network daemons, when they are running in a listen mode there is no 
> real overhead on the system.
> 
>         -Derek
> 
> At 03:41 PM 5/12/2006, wc_fbsd at xxiii.com wrote:
>> At 04:25 PM 5/12/2006, you wrote:
>>> inetd running is discouraged.  Instead run the daemons on boot using 
>>> rc scripts.  If you look back in the history, inetd running is a 
>>> security risk, and was discouraged in the 5.X releases.
>>
>> Is that still really true?  Waaayyy back when, inetd would have all 
>> kinds of dangerous services enabled by default (allowing DOS stuff 
>> like spewing "chargen" into "discard").
>>
>> But that was a configuration issue, and issues with the services it 
>> launched;  not with inetd itself.
>>
>> The authentication is still done within ftpd.  You're just saving the 
>> tiny overhead of running it all the time for occasional use.  And 
>> inetd does allow the tcpwrappers for anything it launches (obviously 
>> the wrappers are compiled into many other things now, ftpd included.)
>>
>>   -Wayne
>>
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> 


-- 
Regards,
Eric