Ubuntu Manpage: xinetd - the extended Internet services daemon

NAME

       xinetd - the extended Internet services daemon

SYNOPSIS

       xinetd [options]

DESCRIPTION

xinetd performs the same function as inetd: it starts programs that provide Internet
services. Instead of having such servers started at system initialization time, and be
dormant until a connection request arrives, xinetd is the only daemon process started and
it listens on all service ports for the services listed in its configuration file. When a
request comes in, xinetd starts the appropriate server. Because of the way it operates,
xinetd (as well as inetd) is also referred to as a super-server.

The services listed in xinetd's configuration file can be separated into two groups.
Services in the first group are called multi-threaded and they require the forking of a
new server process for each new connection request. The new server then handles that
connection. For such services, xinetd keeps listening for new requests so that it can
spawn new servers. On the other hand, the second group includes services for which the
service daemon is responsible for handling all new connection requests. Such services are
called single-threaded and xinetd will stop handling new requests for them until the
server dies. Services in this group are usually datagram-based.

So far, the only reason for the existence of a super-server was to conserve system
resources by avoiding to fork a lot of processes which might be dormant for most of their
lifetime. While fulfilling this function, xinetd takes advantage of the idea of a super-
server to provide features such as access control and logging. Furthermore, xinetd is not
limited to services listed in /etc/services. Therefore, anybody can use xinetd to start
special-purpose servers.

OPTIONS

-d Enables debug mode. This produces a lot of debugging output, and it makes it
possible to use a debugger on xinetd.

-syslog syslog_facility
This option enables syslog logging of xinetd-produced messages using the specified
syslog facility. The following facility names are supported: daemon, auth, user,
local[0-7] (check syslog.conf(5) for their meanings). This option is ineffective
in debug mode since all relevant messages are sent to the terminal.

-filelog logfile
xinetd-produced messages will be placed in the specified file. Messages are always
appended to the file. If the file does not exist, it will be created. This option
is ineffective in debug mode since all relevant messages are sent to the terminal.

-f config_file
Determines the file that xinetd uses for configuration. The default is
/etc/xinetd.conf.

-pidfile pid_file
The process ID is written to the file. This option is ineffective in debug mode.

-dontfork
Tells xinetd to stay in the foreground rather than detaching itself, to support
being run from init or daemontools. This option automatically sets -stayalive (see
below).

-stayalive
Tells xinetd to stay running even if no services are specified.

-limit proc_limit
This option places a limit on the number of concurrently running processes that can
be started by xinetd. Its purpose is to prevent process table overflows.

-logprocs limit
This option places a limit on the number of concurrently running servers for remote
userid acquisition.

-version
This option causes xinetd to print out its version information.

-inetd_compat
This option causes xinetd to read /etc/inetd.conf in addition to the standard
xinetd config files. /etc/inetd.conf is read after the standard xinetd config
files.

-cc interval
This option instructs xinetd to perform periodic consistency checks on its internal
state every interval seconds.

The syslog and filelog options are mutually exclusive. If none is specified, the default
is syslog using the daemon facility. You should not confuse xinetd messages with messages
related to service logging. The latter are logged only if this is specified via the
configuration file.

CONTROLLING XINETD

xinetd performs certain actions when it receives certain signals. The actions associated
with the specific signals can be redefined by editing config.h and recompiling.

SIGHUP causes a hard reconfiguration, which means that xinetd re-reads the
configuration file and terminates the servers for services that are no
longer available. Access control is performed again on running servers by
checking the remote location, access times and server instances. If the
number of server instances is lowered, some arbitrarily picked servers will
be killed to satisfy the limit; this will happen after any servers are
terminated because of failing the remote location or access time checks.
Also, if the INTERCEPT flag was clear and is set, any running servers for
that service will be terminated; the purpose of this is to ensure that
after a hard reconfiguration there will be no running servers that can
accept packets from addresses that do not meet the access control criteria.

SIGQUIT causes program termination.

SIGTERM terminates all running servers before terminating xinetd.

SIGUSR1 causes an internal state dump (the default dump file is
/var/run/xinetd.dump; to change the filename, edit config.h and recompile).

SIGABRT causes an internal consistency check to verify that the data structures
used by the program have not been corrupted. When the check is completed
xinetd will generate a message that says if the check was successful or
not.

On reconfiguration the log files are closed and reopened. This allows removal of old log
files.

FILES

       /etc/xinetd.conf    default configuration file
       /var/run/xinetd.dump
                           default dump file

ENVIRONMENT

       REMOTE_HOST Contains the IP address of the client.

AUTHOR

       Panos Tsirigotis, CS Dept, University of Colorado, Boulder Rob Braun

PRONUNCIATION

       zy-net-d

                                           14 June 2001                                 XINETD(8)