Re: Any Old Port In A Storm

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Richard Braakman wrote:
> On the other hand, isn't that part of system integration, which is
> Debian's job?  Lots of things that are traditionally the admin's job
> are made easier by Debian policies.

I concur.

> I think it would be good to create a Debian ports registry, which
> would be a central place to collect and present information about
> which ports are used by default by which packages.  Its role would
> be similar to the registry of allocated userids.
>
> I'm trying to think of good ways to collect such information in
> the first place.  It would be best if the raw data is supplied
> by the package maintainers directly, and can be updated by them
> when it changes.

Well, we could just use /etc/services as the canoical list, and if a
maintainer wants to grab a high port, they can ask for it to be added to
/etc/services. This has already been done a fair bit in the past, and
/etc/services does contain ports besides just those allocated by IANA.

Of the freenet ports mentioned, most are not registered in
/etc/services:

joey@silk:~>egrep '6690|8082|19114|8081' /etc/services 
tproxy          8081/tcp                        # Transparent Proxy
tproxy          8081/udp                        # Transparent Proxy

I'm not sure if the freenet proxy can be considered a transparent proxy
without stretching the point. Anyway, since it's conflicting with other
services that it does make sense to run on the same box as freenet, Mr.
Bad^W^WEvan could just pick another number, get it added to
/etc/services, and if some other package begins using that number, point
to the services file to get them to move.

-- 
see shy jo