INETD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual INETD(8)
inetd - internet "super-server"
inetd [-d] [-R rate] [configuration file]
inetd should be run at boot time by /etc/rc (see rc(8)). It then 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 fin-
ished, 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.
-R rate
Specify the maximum number of times a service can be invoked in
one minute; the default is 256.
Upon execution, inetd reads its configuration information from a confi-
guration file which, by default, is /etc/inetd.conf. There must be an en-
try 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 be-
ginning of a line. The fields of the configuration file are as follows:
service name
socket type
protocol
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
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 us-
ing gethostbyname(). If a hostname has multiple address mappings, 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 further
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 confi-
guration files (which have no host address specifiers) will be interpret-
ed 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. 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 number. 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. Exam-
ples 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 explicit-
ly, use something like "tcp4" or "udp6". A protocol of "unix" is used to
specify a socket in the UNIX domain.
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 sock-
et. 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 da-
tagram 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 server instances that may be spawned from inetd within an interval of
60 seconds. When omitted, "max" defaults to 256.
Stream servers are usually marked as "nowait" but if a single server pro-
cess 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 supplementary 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 service
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 seconds since midnight, January 1,
1900). All of these services are TCP based. For details of these ser-
vices, 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 configuration
file is reread. inetd creates a file /var/run/inetd.pid that contains its
process identifier.
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:
• If you have only one server on "tcp4", IPv4 traffic will be routed to
the server. IPv6 traffic will not be accepted.
• 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".
• If you have only one server on "tcp6", only IPv6 traffic will be
routed to the server.
inetd tries to set the following DJB-compatible environment variables:
TCPREMOTEIP Contains the IPv4 address of the peer in dotted-decimal
format, or, as an extension to the DJB specification, the
protocol address in the format returned by getnameinfo(3)
with the NI_NUMERICHOST option set.
TCPREMOTEPORT Contains the port of the peer (in decimal).
comsat(8), fingerd(8), ftp-proxy(8), ftpd(8), identd(8), rshd(8),
talkd(8), tftpd(8)
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. DJB compatible environment variables were added
in MirBSD #9.
Host address specifiers, while they make conceptual sense for RPC ser-
vices, do not work entirely correctly. This is largely because the port-
mapper 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.)
"rpc" or "tcpmux" on IPv6 is not tested enough. Kerberos support on IPv6
is not tested.
MirBSD #10-current March 16, 1991 2