INETD(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						  INETD(8)

NAME

     inetd -- internet ``super-server''

SYNOPSIS

     inetd [-d] [-E] [-i] [-l] [-q length] [-R rate] [configuration_file]

DESCRIPTION

     inetd listens for connections on certain internet sockets.  When a connection is found on one of its sockets, it decides what service the
     socket corresponds to, and invokes a program to service the request.  After the program is finished, it continues to listen on the socket
     (except in some cases which will be described below).  Essentially, inetd allows running one daemon to invoke several others, reducing load
     on the system.

     The options are as follows:

     -d      Turns on debugging.

     -E      Prevents inetd from laundering the environment.  Without this option a selection of potentially harmful environent variables, includ-
	     ing PATH, will be removed and not inherited by services.

     -i      Makes the program not daemonize itself.

     -l      Turns on libwrap connection logging and access control.  Internal services cannot be wrapped.  When enabled, /usr/sbin/tcpd is
	     silently not executed even if present in /etc/inetd.conf and instead libwrap is called directly by inetd.

     -q length
	     Specify the length of the listen(2) connections queue; the default is 128.

     -R rate
	     Specify the maximum number of times a service can be invoked in one minute; the default is 256.  If a service exceeds this limit,
	     inetd will log the problem and stop servicing requests for the specific service for ten minutes.  See also the wait/nowait configura-
	     tion fields below.

     Upon execution, inetd reads its configuration information from a configuration file which, by default, is /etc/inetd.conf.  There must be an
     entry for each field of the configuration file, with entries for each field separated by a tab or a space.  Comments are denoted by a ``#''
     at the beginning of a line.  The fields of the configuration file are as follows:

	   service name
	   socket type
	   protocol[,sndbuf=size][,rcvbuf=size]
	   wait/nowait[.max]
	   user[.group] or user[:group]
	   server program
	   server program arguments

     To specify a Sun-RPC based service, the entry would contain these fields.

	   service name/version
	   socket type
	   rpc/protocol[,sndbuf=size][,rcvbuf=size]
	   wait/nowait[.max]
	   user[.group] or user[:group]
	   server program
	   server program arguments

     For internet services, the first field of the line may also have a host address specifier prefixed to it, separated from the service name by
     a colon.  If this is done, the string before the colon in the first field indicates what local address inetd should use when listening for
     that service.  Multiple local addresses can be specified on the same line, separated by commas.  Numeric IP addresses in dotted-quad notation
     can be used as well as symbolic hostnames.  Symbolic hostnames are looked up using gethostbyname().  If a hostname has multiple address map-
     pings, inetd creates a socket to listen on each address.

     The single character ``*'' indicates INADDR_ANY, meaning ``all local addresses''.	To avoid repeating an address that occurs frequently, a
     line with a host address specifier and colon, but no further fields, causes the host address specifier to be remembered and used for all fur-
     ther lines with no explicit host specifier (until another such line or the end of the file).  A line
	   *:
     is implicitly provided at the top of the file; thus, traditional configuration files (which have no host address specifiers) will be inter-
     preted in the traditional manner, with all services listened for on all local addresses.  If the protocol is ``unix'', this value is ignored.

     The service name entry is the name of a valid service in the file /etc/services or a port number.	For ``internal'' services (discussed
     below), the service name must be the official name of the service (that is, the first entry in /etc/services).  When used to specify a Sun-
     RPC based service, this field is a valid RPC service name in the file /etc/rpc.  The part on the right of the ``/'' is the RPC version num-
     ber.  This can simply be a single numeric argument or a range of versions.  A range is bounded by the low version to the high version -
     ``rusers/1-3''.  For UNIX-domain sockets this field specifies the path name of the socket.

     The socket type should be one of ``stream'', ``dgram'', ``raw'', ``rdm'', or ``seqpacket'', depending on whether the socket is a stream,
     datagram, raw, reliably delivered message, or sequenced packet socket.

     The protocol must be a valid protocol as given in /etc/protocols or ``unix''.  Examples might be ``tcp'' or ``udp''.  RPC based services are
     specified with the ``rpc/tcp'' or ``rpc/udp'' service type.  ``tcp'' and ``udp'' will be recognized as ``TCP or UDP over default IP
     version''.  This is currently IPv4, but in the future it will be IPv6.  If you need to specify IPv4 or IPv6 explicitly, use something like
     ``tcp4'' or ``udp6''.  A protocol of ``unix'' is used to specify a socket in the UNIX-domain.

     In addition to the protocol, the configuration file may specify the send and receive socket buffer sizes for the listening socket.  This is
     especially useful for TCP as the window scale factor, which is based on the receive socket buffer size, is advertised when the connection
     handshake occurs, thus the socket buffer size for the server must be set on the listen socket.  By increasing the socket buffer sizes, better
     TCP performance may be realized in some situations.  The socket buffer sizes are specified by appending their values to the protocol specifi-
     cation as follows:

	   tcp,rcvbuf=16384
	   tcp,sndbuf=64k
	   tcp,rcvbuf=64k,sndbuf=1m

     A literal value may be specified, or modified using 'k' to indicate kilobytes or 'm' to indicate megabytes.

     The wait/nowait entry is used to tell inetd if it should wait for the server program to return, or continue processing connections on the
     socket.  If a datagram server connects to its peer, freeing the socket so inetd can receive further messages on the socket, it is said to be
     a ``multi-threaded'' server, and should use the ``nowait'' entry.	For datagram servers which process all incoming datagrams on a socket and
     eventually time out, the server is said to be ``single-threaded'' and should use a ``wait'' entry.  comsat(8) (biff(1)) and talkd(8) are both
     examples of the latter type of datagram server.  tftpd(8) is an exception; it is a datagram server that establishes pseudo-connections.  It
     must be listed as ``wait'' in order to avoid a race; the server reads the first packet, creates a new socket, and then forks and exits to
     allow inetd to check for new service requests to spawn new servers.  The optional ``max'' suffix (separated from ``wait'' or ``nowait'' by a
     dot) specifies the maximum number of times a service can be invoked in one minute; the default is 256.  If a service exceeds this limit,
     inetd will log the problem and stop servicing requests for the specific service for ten minutes.  See also the -R option above.

     Stream servers are usually marked as ``nowait'' but if a single server process is to handle multiple connections, it may be marked as
     ``wait''.	The master socket will then be passed as fd 0 to the server, which will then need to accept the incoming connection.  The server
     should eventually time out and exit when no more connections are active.  inetd will continue to listen on the master socket for connections,
     so the server should not close it when it exits.

     The user entry should contain the user name of the user as whom the server should run.  This allows for servers to be given less permission
     than root.  An optional group name can be specified by appending a dot to the user name followed by the group name.  This allows for servers
     to run with a different (primary) group ID than specified in the password file.  If a group is specified and user is not root, the supplemen-
     tary groups associated with that user will still be set.

     The server program entry should contain the pathname of the program which is to be executed by inetd when a request is found on its socket.
     If inetd provides this service internally, this entry should be ``internal''.

     The server program arguments should be just as arguments normally are, starting with argv[0], which is the name of the program.  If the ser-
     vice is provided internally, the word ``internal'' should take the place of this entry.

     inetd provides several ``trivial'' services internally by use of routines within itself.  These services are ``echo'', ``discard'',
     ``chargen'' (character generator), ``daytime'' (human readable time), and ``time'' (machine readable time, in the form of the number of sec-
     onds since midnight, January 1, 1900).  All of these services are TCP based.  For details of these services, consult the appropriate RFC from
     the Network Information Center.

     inetd rereads its configuration file when it receives a hangup signal, SIGHUP.  Services may be added, deleted or modified when the configu-
     ration file is reread.  inetd creates a file /var/run/inetd.pid that contains its process identifier.

   libwrap
     Support for TCP wrappers is included with inetd to provide built-in tcpd-like access control functionality.  An external tcpd program is not
     needed.  You do not need to change the /etc/inetd.conf server-program entry to enable this capability.  inetd uses /etc/hosts.allow and
     /etc/hosts.deny for access control facility configurations, as described in hosts_access(5).

   IPv6 TCP/UDP behavior
     If you wish to run a server for IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, you'll need to run two separate processes for the same server program, specified as
     two separate lines in inetd.conf, for ``tcp4'' and ``tcp6''.

     Under various combinations of IPv4/v6 daemon settings, inetd will behave as follows:
     o	 If you have only one server on ``tcp4'', IPv4 traffic will be routed to the server.  IPv6 traffic will not be accepted.
     o	 If you have two servers on ``tcp4'' and ``tcp6'', IPv4 traffic will be routed to the server on ``tcp4'', and IPv6 traffic will go to
	 server on ``tcp6''.
     o	 If you have only one server on ``tcp6'', only IPv6 traffic will be routed to the server.

	 The special ``tcp46'' parameter can be used for obsolete servers which require to receive IPv4 connections mapped in an IPv6 socket. Its
	 usage is discouraged.

SEE ALSO

     fingerd(8), ftpd(8), identd(8), rshd(8), talkd(8), tftpd(8)

HISTORY

     The inetd command appeared in 4.3BSD.  Support for Sun-RPC based services is modelled after that provided by SunOS 4.1.  IPv6 support was
     added by the KAME project in 1999.

     Marco d'Itri ported this code from OpenBSD in summer 2002 and added socket buffers tuning and libwrap support from the NetBSD source tree.

BUGS

     On Linux systems, the daemon cannot reload its configuration and needs to be restarted when the host address for a service is changed between
     ``*'' and a specific address.

     Server programs used with ``dgram'' ``udp'' ``nowait'' must read from the network socket, or inetd will spawn processes until the maximum is
     reached.

     Host address specifiers, while they make conceptual sense for RPC services, do not work entirely correctly.  This is largely because the
     portmapper interface does not provide a way to register different ports for the same service on different local addresses.  Provided you
     never have more than one entry for a given RPC service, everything should work correctly.	(Note that default host address specifiers do
     apply to RPC lines with no explicit specifier.)

BSD
								 December 29, 2009							       BSD