inetd.conf(4tcp)

Synopsis

service sock_type protocol nwait user program [args]

Description

The file consists of a series of single-line entries, each entry corresponding to a service to be invoked by inetd. These services are connection-based, datagram, or ``internal.''

Internal services are those supported by the inetd program: these services are echo, discard, chargen (character generator), daytime (human readable time), and time (machine readable time, in the form of the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1900). All of these services are both TCP and UDP based. (For details of these services, consult the appropriate RFC: RFC 862, RFC 863, RFC 864, RFC 867, RFC 868, respectively.)

Each standard service that inetd can start has a well-known port assigned to it. The service may implement an official Internet standard or it may be a UNIX-specific service. Each service must have a valid entry in /etc/services. In the case of an internal service, its name must correspond to the official name of the service: that is, the first field of the service entry in /etc/services.

Each entry has a series of fields separated by spaces or tabs. Only the last field is optional. The fields are:

service

Name of a valid service in /etc/services, as described above.

sock_type

The socket type (see socket(3sock)) may be one of:

stream

Stream.

dgram[/i]

Datagram. If present, the ``/i'' flag indicates that the IP_RECVIFINDEX option has been activated on the socket. This allows the service to identify the network interface on which a packet was received. This option must be specified for dhcpd(1Mtcp) or bootpgw(1Mtcp) which can operate with multiple interfaces.

raw

Raw socket.

protocol

Name of a valid protocol such as ``tcp'', specified in /etc/protocols.

nwait

Must be either wait or nowait. Specifies whether the socket can be made available for new connections while there is still data waiting on the socket. The value is always nowait unless it is a datagram socket. If it is a datagram socket, the value is usually wait, although nowait is possible in some cases. (Note that tftpd is an exception in that it must have wait specified, and yet the socket can continue to process messages on the port.)

user

Name of the user under which the server should run. This allows servers to be run with less permission than ``root''. If the server needs to change user IDs to another user (for example, ftpd) then its entry should be set to root.

program

Except in the case of internal services, full pathname of the server program to be invoked by inetd when a request is waiting on a socket. For an internal service, the value is internal.

The program that is invoked may be the service daemon itself, or it can be the tcp wrapper daemon, in.tcpd, which is used to control access by hosts. See tcpd(1Mtcp) for more information.

args

Arguments to the server program, starting with argv[0], which is the name of the program. inetd currently allows a maximum of twenty (20) arguments per service.

The distribution inetd.conf file contains prototype entries; refer to these entries when editing the file.

Files

References