Oh my. inetd/xinetd are... or at least USED to be what started up, well, internet services. The idea was that you didn't have individual programs listening on specific ports - you just had inetd running. It'd listen on specified ports and when an incomming connection was made, it'd route it to the correct program. For example, if there was a connection on port 79, it would throw it to finger. Port 23 would get thrown to telnet, 20/21 would go to ftp, etc. On secure systems it is common practice to disable inetd/xinetd... and frankly I'm pretty sure it's dead by default on most modern systems. It's basically a very outdated method of listening for incomming connections. Nowadays most programs/protocols just run their own daemons. inetd is both a security risk and no longer needed because we have plenty of memory/other resources. On Thu, 9 May 2013, Olwe Bottorff wrote: > I'm working with a programming language that wants to use x/inetd. What is > it and what is it for? My research says it's for "internet," and then talks > above my head. Can anyone explain it in basic terms and give examples of its > use? For example, here's one explanation: > > xinetd listens for incoming requests over a network and launches the > appropriate service for that request.[2] Requests are made using port > numbers as identifiers and xinetd usually launches another daemon to handle > the request. It can be used to start services with both privileged and > non-privileged port numbers. > > Any "best/typical" uses I could peruse? > > LB > GM,MN > >