I´m currently setting up an old laptop to act as a "wireless music player".
To do this, I`m using netcat to receive and then pipe the audio stream via sox into rawplay.
Is there a way to configure inetd to automatically start netcat when port 5454 is accessed?
The way it is now I have to ssh into the box to start the shell script that sets up the netcat/sox/rawplay pipe manually, and it would be nice to have this done by inetd or some other service.

Thanks in advance!

Couldn't you use the form "ssh user@host:yourscript" so the ssh command starts the script.

I suppose i could, but how do i keep nc running? It seems to quit right away.
I tried to append an & at the end of the command, didnt work..

I just thought that you might not want a port open for netcat. The netcat command is also a tool that crackers love. It is almost like a net enabled dd command.

Take a look at the configs in /etc/xinet.d/ and base your config on one of them. There are two things to consider. First, you could create a system user to run the service as. Second, read up on running your service in a jail.

Both netcat and xinetd can work with udp datagram streams as well as tcp connections. Udp would be a better choice for delivering live media.

Well, this machine is connected to my internal network only, so security isn't paramount. Also I'm on Slackware 11, which I think use inetd. I tried setting up port 5454 in /etc/services, like this:

wfstream 5454/tcp
wfstream 5454/udp


and adding a corresponding line in /etc/inetd.conf, like this:

wfstream stream tcp nowait root /usr/bin/nc -l -p 5454 |sox -t mp3 - -t wav - |rawplay


Well, it doesn't work this way, any ideas?