Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.27+, H06.04+)

Administrator Commands and Files inetd(8)
SockType
One of stream, dgram,orraw, depending on whether the socket is a stream, datagram,
or raw socket.
ProtoName
A valid protocol as given in /etc/protocols. Examples are tcp or udp.
Wait/Nowait
Applicable to datagram sockets only. (Other sockets should have a nowait entry in this
space.)
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 multithreaded server, and should use the
nowait
entry.
For datagram servers that process all incoming datagrams on a socket and eventually time
out, the server is defined as singlethreaded, and should use a
wait entry.
UserName
The username of the user for whom the server should run. This allows for servers to be
given less permission than the super ID.
Proc The processor number of one or more processors on which to run the corresponding exter-
nal server process. This field is optional and can be omitted.
This field is used to perform load-balancing of server processes among the processors
within a node. When this field is omitted, inetd assigns each server it starts to the next
available processor in the node. This field is ignored unless the -L flag is specified when
inetd is started.
The number specification must be enclosed in square brackets ([ and ]). If more than one
processor number is used, the numbers can be specified as a range (using a dash between
the lowest and highest processor numbers in the range), as a comma-separated list, or as a
combination of those two formats. The current processor (the processor on which inetd
runs) can be specified using empty brackets ([]). Blanks cannot appear within the brack-
ets.
When inetd is started without specifying the -L flag, the behavior is the same as when
empty brackets are used with the -L flag; that is, all external service programs run on the
processor used by inetd.
SrvPath
The pathname of the server program that is to be executed by inetd when a service
request is found on its socket. If inetd provides a service internally, this entry should be
internal.
SrvArgs
The command-line arguments that the server process must execute. For services that
inetd provides internally, this field should be left empty.
The arguments to a SrvPath entry should be specified just as they normally are for a shell
command line, starting with argv[0], which is the name of the program.
The inetd process can provide several trivial services itself, without using external server pro-
grams. 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.
The inetd process rereads its configuration file when it receives a hangup signal, SIGHUP. Ser-
vices may be added, deleted, or modified when the configuration file is reread.
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