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inetd(1M) inetd(1M)

NAME

inetd - Internet services daemon

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/inetd [-c]

/usr/sbin/inetd [-k]

/usr/sbin/inetd [-l]

DESCRIPTION

The inetd daemon is the Internet superserver, which invokes Internet server processes as needed. It

must be running before other hosts can connect to the local host through ftp, rcp, remsh, rlogin, and

telnet. The inetd daemon also supports services based on the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol

(NFS), such as rwalld and rusersd. If RPC servers are started by inetd, the portmap server (see

portmap(1M)) must be started before inetd.

The inetd daemon is designed to invoke all the Internet servers as needed, thus reducing load on the sys-

tem. It is normally started at system boot time. Only one inetd can run at any given time.

The inetd daemon starts servers for both stream and datagram type services. For stream services,

inetd listens for connection requests on Internet stream sockets. When a connection is requested for one

of its sockets, inetd decides which service the socket will support, forks a process, invokes an appropriate

server for the connection, and passes the connected socket to the server as stdin and stdout. Then

inetd returns to listening for connection requests.

For datagram services, inetd waits for activity on Internet datagram sockets. When an incoming

datagram is detected, inetd forks a process, invokes an appropriate server, and passes the socket to the

server as stdin and stdout. Then inetd waits, ignoring activity on that datagram socket, until the

server exits.

The inetd daemon is normally started by the /sbin/init.d/inetd

script, which is invoked during

the boot-time initialization. Otherwise,

inetd can be started only by the superuser.

The Internet daemon and the servers it starts inherit the

LANG and TZ environment variables and the

umask of the process that started inetd.Ifinetd is started by the superuser, it inherits the

superuser’s umask, and passes that umask to the servers it starts.

When invoked, inetd reads /etc/inetd.conf

and conﬁgures itself to support whatever services are

included in that ﬁle (see inetd.conf(4)). The

inetd daemon also performs a security check if the ﬁle

/var/adm/inetd.sec

exists (see inetd.sec(4)). If the Internet daemon refuses a connection for secu-

rity reasons, the connection is shut down. Most RPC-based services, if their ﬁrst connection is refused,

attempt to connect four more times at 5-second intervals before timing out. In such cases,

inetd refuses

the connection from the same service invocation ﬁve times. This is visible in the system log if

inetd con-

nection logging and

syslogd logging for the daemon facility are both enabled (see syslogd(1M)).

The

inetd daemon provides several "trivial" services internally by use of routines within itself. The ser-

vices 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). The

inetd daemon provides both TCP- and UDP-based servers for each of these services. See inetd.conf(4) for

instructions on conﬁguring internal servers.

Options

inetd recognizes the following options. These options can be used only by a superuser.

-c Reconﬁgure the Internet daemon; in other words, force the current inetd to reread

/etc/inetd.conf. This option sends the signal SIGHUP to the Internet daemon that is

currently running. Any conﬁguration errors that occur during the reconﬁguration are logged to

the syslogd daemon facility.

-k Kill the current inetd. This option sends the signal SIGTERM to the Internet daemon that is

currently running, causing it to exit gracefully. This option is the preferred method of killing

inetd.

-l By default, inetd starts with connection logging disabled. If no inetd is running, the -l

option causes the inetd to start with connection logging enabled. Otherwise the -l option

causes

inetd to send the signal SIGQUIT to the inetd that is already running, which causes

it to toggle the state of connection logging.

Section 1M−−340 − 1 − HP-UX Release 11i: December 2000

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