Re: inetd.conf entries

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Sven Burgener <svenb@bluewin.ch> wrote:
>What are each of the following lines for and thus which can be commented
>out by me?
>
>-- inetd.conf snippet --
>#echo		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
>#echo		dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

Echo, returns the packet sent to it (RFC 862).

>#chargen	stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
>#chargen	dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

Character Generator, sends you a stream of some undefined data,
preferably data in some recognizable pattern (RFC 864).

>discard		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
>discard		dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

Discard, throws away anything sent to it, just like /dev/null (RFC 863).

I'd imagine that any of the above three might be used in denial of
service attacks, though I'm not a security expert.

>daytime		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
>#daytime	dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

Daytime, sends the current date and time as a character string (RFC
867).

>time		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
>#time		dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

Time, sends the time in seconds since midnight on 1 January 1900 (RFC
868).

NTP (Network Time Protocol) may be considered better for these two.

I don't think you actually need any of these; they're all commented out
on my system with no ill effects. You'll find all the RFCs mentioned
above in the doc-rfc package if you're interested, as well as STD1 which
is useful for finding relevant RFCs.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]