Hello,

I am running SuSE EL 9. My question is, if i make any modifications in /etc/services file then how could i restart all the services to take affect new changes without restarting the actual system??

Thanks.

/etc/services is just a lookup file. It doesn't START any "services". It is used to equate a port (socket) number with a name.

The main reason to define items in /etc/services is to sort of reserve them so they are no longer shown as free ports for random port access. Some programs when they run open a specific port (e.g. telnet uses port 23). Other programs just say "get me an available port". If the port is not in /etc/services and not currently in use it will appear to be available. Putting it in /etc/services says it's not available for random usage. It isn't a true reservation however as any program that requests a specific port number would do it whether or not it was in /etc/services.

Many (not all) of the items that use /etc/services are defined in inetd.conf or xinetd.d/<file>. It is these things that start. (e.g. telnetd is the daemon that would run to answer telnet requests on port 23.)