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

NAME
     inetd - internet ``super-server''

SYNOPSIS
     inetd [-d] [-R rate] [configuration_file]

DESCRIPTION
     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.  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 con-
             figuration fields below.

     Upon execution, inetd reads its configuration information from a configu-
     ration 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
     beginning of a line.  The fields of the configuration file are as fol-
     lows:

           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 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 configu-
     ration files (which have no host address specifiers) will be interpreted
     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 sin-
     gle 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 sock-
     ets 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 explicitly, 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 excep-
     tion; 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 op-
     tional ``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 eventual-
     ly 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 serv-
     er 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 mid-
     night, January 1, 1900).  All of these services are TCP based.  For de-
     tails of these services, consult the appropriate RFC from the Network In-
     formation Center.

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

   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 sep-
     arate 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.

SEE ALSO
     comsat(8), fingerd(8), ftp-proxy(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.

BUGS
     Host address specifiers, while they make conceptual sense for RPC ser-
     vices, 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.)

OpenBSD 4.5                      June 28, 2008                               3