[techtalk] Tightening Security

[James A. Sutherland]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Mandi wrote:

> James -
>
> I thought that too, but according to the man page for inetd.conf, the
> first column of a service listing in inetd.conf has to be the correct name
> from /etc/services.

Yes. This is just used a convenient way of specifying port numbers,
though.

> With xinetd, you can specify that the service you want to run is unlisted,
> ie missing from /etc/services, and it will run.
>
> Services with their own constant daemons (like httpd) aren't specified in
> /etc/inetd.conf, anyway.  it's mostly transient connection programs, i
> think...

Correct. Anyway, /etc/services IS just a simple mapping of
names<->numbers; adding or removing entries doesn't enable or disable
anything. Deleting the entry for something in inetd will stop it working,
but it's not the right way to do that!


James.