inetd.conf(4)

NAME

inetd.conf − configuration file for inetd

DESCRIPTION

On invocation, the inetd daemon reads its configuration information from the /etc/inetd.conf configuration file, and possibly at some later time in response to a SIGHUP signal (see inetd(1M)).

Each line in the file is treated either as a comment or as configuration information for a given service. Comments are denoted by a # at the beginning of a line. Noncomment lines contain seven or nine required fields, depending on the service name specified in the first field. Fields are separated by tabs and/or spaces. A line can be continued if it terminates with a \. Each configuration line in the file contains the following fields in the order indicated:

• service name
• socket type
• protocol
• wait|nowait
• user
• server program
• program number (NFS RPC services only)
• version number (NFS RPC services only)
• server program arguments

Fields are constructed as follows:

service name rpc if the server is RPC-based (NFS); otherwise, the name of a valid service in file /etc/services. For example, shell for the remsh service (see remsh(1)), login for the rlogin service (see rlogin(1)), and telnet for the telnet service (see telnet(1)).

socket type stream or dgram, depending on whether the server socket is a stream or a datagram socket.

protocol Must be a valid protocol as given in /etc/protocols; for example, tcp or udp.

wait|nowait Specifies whether inetd should act as a single- or multi-threaded server.

wait Instructs inetd to start one server to handle an incoming request, and cease listening for new requests for the same service until the server started exits.

nowait Instructs inetd to start one server for each incoming request.

Most UDP-based services use wait for this field, while TCP-based services use nowait.

user User ID to be used when the server is running.

server program Absolute path name of the program executed by inetd when it finds a request on the server’s socket.

server program arguments
Arguments to the server program. The same as in normal use, starting with argv[0], which is the name of the program.

If service name is rpc (NFS RPC services), two extra fields are required. They must appear between the server program field and the server program arguments field:

program number Defines a particular service grouping and is unique.

version number Version supported by the RPC service. This number can be a single value, or a range, if the program handles multiple versions; for example, 1 or 1-3. Ranges are separated by a hyphen (−). Version numbers allow RPC protocols to be extended and modified, and make it possible for old and new protocols to share the same server process.

Built-in inetd Services

The inetd daemon provides several "trivial" services internally by use of built-in routines (see inetd(1M) for a list of these services). To configure an internal service, specify internal as the server program name, and omit the server program arguments field.

EXAMPLES

Configure the shell service to use TCP protocol, and run the server remshd as user root.

shell stream tcp nowait root /usr/lbin/remshd remshd

Configure the FTP server to timeout an inactive session after 75 seconds.

ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/lbin/ftpd ftpd −t75

Configure an RPC-based service. Note that the service name field contains rpc and two more fields are used: the program number (100008) and version number (1).

rpc dgram udp wait root /usr/lib/netsvc/rwall/rpc.rwalld 100008 1 rpc.rwalld

Configure inetd to use the built-in daytime TCP service.

daytime stream tcp nowait root internal

AUTHOR

inetd.conf was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.

NFS was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Museum