inetd

[Cef]

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 18:11, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 05:35:50PM +1000, Cef wrote:
> > The issue with doing this in Debian was that netbase depends on
> > netkit-inetd, so it'll be installed anyway. So unless you don't
> > consider /etc/services, /etc/protocols and /etc/rpc somewhat necessary to
> > a networked system, this was a no-no.
>
> I will simply remove the dependency from netbase.  It isn't necessary for
> our purposes..

I'd guess some packages may depend on netbase when they should really depend 
on netkit-inetd. This could cause problems as detailed below:

If /etc/inetd.conf isn't present (it's usually created in 
netkit-inetd.preinst), update-inetd will fail away silently (no error or 
errorlevel on exit), but any entries will not be written anywhere because the 
file doesn't exist. This will be a pain if you install something then realise 
it needs inetd, as you'll pretty much have to reinstall it. Installing of 
packages won't fail because of this though, they just won't work as expected.

In the end (after warty), update-inetd really belongs in netkit-inetd, and 
anything at all that calls update-inetd needs to either handle not finding at 
install. If it really needs inetd (ie: doesn't have it's own stand-alone 
daemon mode),  it should depend upon netkit-inetd. I still think inetd 
shouldn't run on boot either unless asked, as IMHO this should be a conscious 
decision to enable it on the part of the machines owner.

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - cef at optus.net