On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 05:45:31PM +0200, Magnus Holmgren wrote: > A legitimate question is whether the xinetd configuration format is a good > format. Are there, or will there be, even more "extended" inetd:s? apt-cache search shows at least: inetutils-inetd - Internet super server micro-inetd - simple network service spawner openbsd-inetd - The OpenBSD Internet Superserver rinetd - Internet TCP redirection server rlinetd - gruesomely over-featured inetd replacement superd - Single-port inetd with pre-forking, suited for high-speed servers xinetd - replacement for inetd with many enhancements only 3 of them provides inet-superserver: $ grep-dctrl -s Package -FProvides inet-superserver /var/lib/apt/lists/mad_debian_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages Package: inetutils-inetd Package: openbsd-inetd Package: rlinetd I believe inetutils-inetd and openbsd-inetd are drop-in replacements for the usual simple inetd program. rlinetd and xinetd have quite more extensive features sets, and very different configuration file syntaxes. Though, rlinetd is completely abandonned for years (last release in '99) and has very few installs, whereas xinetd has many users, and if not actively maintained, is more recent. I'd also say that xinetd supersedes rlinetd features afaict. IMHO the problem is easy to solve, I'd go this way: Have a registry in /etc/ with a simple syntax (like ini-style), that would be a superset of all the features in all supported superservers. Local administrators would have to edit those files to make their local changes. Then every superserver would have to write tools to generate their config file from the registry. This config file would only be a runtime thing that the admin should not edit. The admin should also be able to add configurations for this or this superserver in its native format if he wants to. The superserver would obviously have to merge those configurations, and shout if the registry and the local files try to put a service on the same port (I don't think it's wise to have any of them to automatically override the other). I don't think that writing the tool to deal with the configuration registry is very hard, the most difficult thing is to read xinetd.conf(5), inetd.conf(5) and come up with a decent amount of possible configurations. The downside of this proposal is that every package using a super server would have to be updated, but OTOH that is not a big number of packages: $ grep-dctrl -s Package -FDepends netkit-inetd -o -FDepends inet-superserver -o -FDepends update-inetd \ /var/lib/apt/lists/mad_debian_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages | wc -l 51 Also note that this would ease the integration of things like upstart that (I'm told) may have inetd-like services at some point. Not that I really care, but it seems to be sexy those days, so ... -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O madcoder@debian.org OOO http://www.madism.org
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