xinetd vs inetd

Do u know the basic differences between xinetd and inetd..
I have written this here. Because i have learned that xinetd is more secure than inetd..... If something like that is true,, so why services like apache,mysql e.t.c run form inet.d ??Thx

The inetd daemon is a master daemon that listens on a number of different network ports. When a connection comes in, it wakes up the relevant daemon (e.g. telnetd, ftpd, fingerd, rshd). This reduces system overhead where daemons are only called occasionally : for the 99% of the time that no new connections are coming in, only one daemon is using up CPU cycles rather than lots. (If you have a daemon which is being used a lot, such as ftpd in a dedicated ftp server, you would run it all the time and not use inetd).

As far as I know, xinetd and inetd and just different implementations of this same functionality. Xinet is more complex (rather than one single config. file, lots of different ones) but allows more granularity of control (and tools like chkconfig make management simple).

I'm not aware of any real security advantages for one or the other.

thx for the reply.... But it woulb be useful is someone telling us about secutity

Xinetd gives you a liittle more control and added flexibility over various network paramers (logging, load throttling, etc) and implements tcp_wrappers differently than inetd. Is one inherently insecure compared to the other? Not really. Here's a couple of links about the features in xinetd:

http://www.synack.net/xinetd/faq.html
http://www.xinetd.org/#features
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerwork...l=805,p=xinetd

If you don't use daemons like ftp or webservers, will it be okay to disable inetd? Will i still be able to use the internet and play quake 3 online?
Would disabling this make my system more secure or would it just be redundant?

ianr gave a good description of the function of inetd. The question is really do you run alot of server applications and do they experience high loads. If you turn off inetd, you will have to manually configure your system to start those daemons indivdually at start-up. If you have a couple of server daemons that experience a relatively low amount of incomming connections, then it doesn't make sense to have each daemon running all the time and you might want to use inetd.

If you are not planning to run any daemons at all, check the inetd.conf file to see what applications are currently running through inetd. If you are sure that you don't need them, then you can turn off inetd. It shouldn't affect your ability to access the internet of play games. In terms of security, you should always turn off server daemons that your are not using, so disabling inetd is a good idea if you don't need it or any of the servers run through it.

Thanks, killing inetd closed about 4 ports. Also not using up system memory anymore either.