deprecate and move off using update-inetd?
Hi Debian-QA,
While working on a bug in a package that involved an update-inetd
rathole(#24043) I got to thinking about it.
It's got some really old bugs and can't handle a bunch of cases we care
about. There was the reconf-inetd effort
https://dep-team.pages.debian.net/deps/dep9/
but that is marked obsolete with the explanation
"As of Feb 2014: With a dynamic init system in Debian finally being
adopted, inetd is irrelevant, hence reconf-inetd too, so I mark this DEP
as obsolete, since it's not worth the migration effort."
Now that systemd provides a simple way to do socket activated services,
I think maybe we should stop automatically enabling things in maintainer
scripts with update-inetd. People not using systemd or preferring other
inet-superservers can still enable it for things they want. (1)
I guess update-inetd as a utility might still have some use, it doesn't
necessarily need to go away, just the calling of it in maintainer scripts.
If I search for things still using it there is not much:
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=update-inetd+--add&literal=1
(NOTE: search is explicitly for --add, more stuff has postrm things
cleaning it up since they dropped it).
Also there was this old thread about packages depending on update-inetd
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2007/07/msg01013.html
TL;DR packages shouldn't depend on update-inetd but instead should
depend on inet-superserver and packages that provide that will have the
dependency.
apt-cache rdepends shows maybe 20-25 things that depend on it (that
aren't themselves an inet-superserver). I have not reviewed those to see
which already ship systemd files. I guess each of those would need one
if they didn't already one, cleanup any --add's, and document things in
changelog/NEWS. Next step would be reviewing these and mass bug filing,
if people think this is a good idea.
NOTE: I am not (yet) advocating for getting rid of inetd in general,
maybe some people still prefer it, hosts.allow/deny/etc. But we could
eventually have that discussion if people want.
1. I suppose it might be possible to have a debhelper tool that knows
about systemd and inetd and activates things accordingly but I have no
idea how much demand there would be for such a thing.
--
Matt Taggart
matt@lackof.org
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