The /etc/xinetd.d/ Directory

The /etc/xinetd.d/ directory contains the configuration files for each service managed by xinetd and the names of the files correlate to the service. As with xinetd.conf, this directory is read only when the xinetd service is started. For any changes to take effect, the administrator must restart the xinetd service.

The format of files in the /etc/xinetd.d/ directory use the same conventions as /etc/xinetd.conf. The primary reason the configuration for each service is stored in a separate file is to make customization easier and less likely to affect other services.

To gain an understanding of how these files are structured, consider the /etc/xinetd.d/krb5-telnet file:

service telnet
{
         flags           = REUSE
  socket_type     = stream
  wait            = no
  user            = root
  server          = /usr/kerberos/sbin/telnetd
  log_on_failure  += USERID
  disable         = yes
}

These lines control various aspects of the telnet service:

• service - Specifies the service name, usually one of those listed in the /etc/services file.

• flags - Sets any of a number of attributes for the connection. REUSE instructs xinetd to reuse the socket for a Telnet connection.

  The REUSE flag is deprecated. All services now implicitly use the REUSE flag.

• socket_type - Sets the network socket type to stream.
• wait - Specifies whether the service is single-threaded (yes) or multi-threaded (no).
• user - Specifies which user ID the process runs under.
• server - Specifies which binary executable to launch.
• log_on_failure - Specifies logging parameters for log_on_failure in addition to those already defined in xinetd.conf.
• disable - Specifies whether the service is disabled (yes) or enabled (no).

Refer to the xinetd.conf man page for more information about these options and their usage.