Just installed Mandrake 8.0 to give it a try and noticed that inetd is not on the system. Does anyone know if this distro simply is not bundled with the daemon or has Mandrake decided to soley use xinetd now?

Seems rather silly to simply stop providing the option all of a sudden..........

I dont know the Mandrake distro, but xinetd is a superserver just like inetd. The only difference is xinetd doesnt support RPC services, for that u still need inetd.

No wonder Samba won't work.
Thanks for the info. You saved me hours of frustration.....

Only other thing I'd add to unSpawns comments is that xinetd is suppose to be more secure... Not to up on the details, but RH, and Mandrake, and quite a few other distros have switched to xinetd for that reason.

HTH,

From what I know about xinetd, it simply bypasses the need to use the /etc/services file, thus allowing you to create service files anywhere you like on the machine. I am assuming that the increased security arises from the fact that you dont need to use a centralized file, listing the services and ports you are enabling. By creating your own files anywhere you like, and under any name you like, security must be higher.

It would still be nice to have the option though.

Hmm, sounds like what we would call "security by obscurity". It would be wrong to mistake a virtual sense of security as -real- security. No port changing enhances security, any client/portscanner that grabs banners off services can easily determine what's running there.

The /etc/services btw isn't used in a restrictive way, its more like a simple system lookup table of port/protocol pairings, diff nmap's services file with ure own, and ull see what I mean. I regularly update my file with the latest trojan/w0rm/attackdata for an easy view at my chains reports.