On Monday 23 July 2007 18:47, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Jul 23, Magnus Holmgren <holmgren@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> > Packages containing servers that can be started from inetd should all
> > provide an xinetd configuration file in /etc/xinetd.d. They will
> > instantly work with
>
> Way too much work, and "better support for xinetd" is not something
> important enough to justify it.
Perhaps not, but the possibility to just drop a configuration snippet in
a ".d" directory, instead of having to mess with a single configuration file,
is appealing IMHO. Russ: May I ask why you don't like xinetd?
> > xinetd, and update-inetd can use the information, which is a superset
> > (right?) of that used by other inetd's, to update the old-school
> > inetd.conf.
>
> A simpler fix is to create an update-inetd program which will update the
> xinetd configuration. This does not require to modify any other package
> (except optionally the original update-inetd program to handle the
> transition between the two packages).
Apparently not simple enough for it to be implemented already...
Anyway, you have proposed that all superserver packages provide their own
update-inetd implementation, which is fine and simple enough, except that
it's not clear how the configuration would be transferred when one
superserver is replaced by another. There needs to be some common data
format, whether a file format or an in-memory data structure. One drawback of
introducing a common *registry*, whether that be /etc/xinetd.d or something
Debian-specific, is the problem of synchronizing changes between the registry
and the respective configuration files. Because of that, it might be better
only to use the common format temporarily when switching from one superserver
package to another.
Hmm, now when I look at rlinetd, I see that it uses a configuration format
similar to, but not at all compatible with, that of xinetd. It
diverts /usr/sbin/update-inetd and provides its own version, which calls the
original one after doing its work. Thus switching from rlinetd to one of the
superservers using the traditional configuration format works at a basic
level, but any customisation of the rlinetd config is not preserved. I guess
xinetd could do the same, using the existing itox program to do the
conversion. After all, services can only expect the least common subset of
options to work, and superservers have many different features, which not all
are translatable.
--
Magnus Holmgren holmgren@lysator.liu.se
(No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)
"Exim is better at being younger, whereas sendmail is better for
Scrabble (50 point bonus for clearing your rack)" -- Dave Evans
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