We're in an era where inetds are less and less a central piece of a
standard Linux distribution. Inetd was used in the past because many
servers lacked a proper standalone mode, or were too memory-hungry.
Most machines nowadays have enough memory, and most daemons provide a
standalone mode (I mean who configures apache as an inetd service ?).
Looking at my own case, my sole inetd uses are for bitlebee which
nowadays provides a standalone mode, and git-daemon because I'm too lazy
to write an init script.
Just looking at the packages requiring an inet superserver, you'll see that
it's probably that nowadays users don't need a superserver at all[0].
I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
goal for squeeze.
Note: I'm not saying we should remove super servers from Debian, I'm just
saying it's not as central as it used to be.
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03-10-2009, 02:35 AM
Steve Langasek
inetd's status in Debian
On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 08:06:16PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> Just looking at the packages requiring an inet superserver, you'll see that
> it's probably that nowadays users don't need a superserver at all[0].
Yes, and many users no longer have a superserver installed for that reason.
> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
> goal for squeeze.
Why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Having a superserver installed isn't
broken. Why should every daemon have to implement connection handling when
they can offload that to the inetd?
Demoting inetd from standard to optional seems to me like a reasonable
release goal; that doesn't require patching lots of upstream code that works
just fine the way it is already. In fact, AFAICS it doesn't require
patching any of our packages.
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03-10-2009, 05:31 AM
Luk Claes
inetd's status in Debian
Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 08:06:16PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
>> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
>> goal for squeeze.
>
> Why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Having a superserver installed isn't
> broken. Why should every daemon have to implement connection handling when
> they can offload that to the inetd?
>
> Demoting inetd from standard to optional seems to me like a reasonable
> release goal; that doesn't require patching lots of upstream code that works
> just fine the way it is already. In fact, AFAICS it doesn't require
> patching any of our packages.
Right, isn't that the proposal: demote inetd and update-inetd to
optional/extra?
Btw, lots of packages are depending on update-inetd while it's
guaranteed to be available when depending on inet-superserver.
Cheers
Luk
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03-10-2009, 05:39 AM
Steve Langasek
inetd's status in Debian
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 07:31:35AM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 08:06:16PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> >> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
> >> goal for squeeze.
> > Why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Having a superserver installed isn't
> > broken. Why should every daemon have to implement connection handling when
> > they can offload that to the inetd?
> > Demoting inetd from standard to optional seems to me like a reasonable
> > release goal; that doesn't require patching lots of upstream code that works
> > just fine the way it is already. In fact, AFAICS it doesn't require
> > patching any of our packages.
> Right, isn't that the proposal: demote inetd and update-inetd to
> optional/extra?
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I read this as a proposal to make /use/ of
inetd optional for the packages that currently depend on it.
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Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
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03-10-2009, 06:44 AM
inetd's status in Debian
On Mar 10, Luk Claes <luk@debian.org> wrote:
> Btw, lots of packages are depending on update-inetd while it's
> guaranteed to be available when depending on inet-superserver.
Indeed, this is broken. IIRC some helpful soul started reporting "bugs"
asking to depend on update-inetd too...
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ciao,
Marco
03-10-2009, 06:48 AM
Thijs Kinkhorst
inetd's status in Debian
On moandei 9 Maart 2009, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> Just looking at the packages requiring an inet superserver, you'll see that
> it's probably that nowadays users don't need a superserver at all[0].
>
> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
> goal for squeeze.
Yes, I think it would make sense to make them priority optional. Currently the
standard installation does not include any active services so inetd just
lingers around doing nothing. Demoting it to optional will do the right
thing, installing a super server just in time: when you're also installing
some package depending on it.
cheers,
Thijs
03-10-2009, 10:13 AM
"Francesco P. Lovergine"
inetd's status in Debian
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 08:44:06AM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 10, Luk Claes <luk@debian.org> wrote:
>
> > Btw, lots of packages are depending on update-inetd while it's
> > guaranteed to be available when depending on inet-superserver.
> Indeed, this is broken. IIRC some helpful soul started reporting "bugs"
> asking to depend on update-inetd too...
>
That remembers me a point: maybe it makes sense having a debhelper
dh_ script to manage automagically the call to update-inetd when available
or eventually warn the user to install update-inetd and update
inetd/xinetd configuration manually, when update-inetd is NOT available.
That would avoid to depend on update-inetd or inet-superserver at all
Having a snippet of code like that replicated for every package is pointless.
Also, update-inetd is a very partial solution for managing superserver
configurations, but that's another problem...
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03-10-2009, 09:39 PM
Pierre Habouzit
inetd's status in Debian
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 06:39:23AM +0000, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 07:31:35AM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> > Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 08:06:16PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
>
> > >> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
> > >> goal for squeeze.
>
> > > Why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Having a superserver installed isn't
> > > broken. Why should every daemon have to implement connection handling when
> > > they can offload that to the inetd?
>
> > > Demoting inetd from standard to optional seems to me like a reasonable
> > > release goal; that doesn't require patching lots of upstream code that works
> > > just fine the way it is already. In fact, AFAICS it doesn't require
> > > patching any of our packages.
>
> > Right, isn't that the proposal: demote inetd and update-inetd to
> > optional/extra?
>
> Perhaps I misunderstood, but I read this as a proposal to make /use/ of
> inetd optional for the packages that currently depend on it.
That's probably because of my broken english because what luk and you
said was what I proposed: demote inetd to extra/optionnal instead of
standard. It could make space on the CDs to more useful stuff e.g.
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OOO http://www.madism.org
03-10-2009, 11:00 PM
Roger Leigh
inetd's status in Debian
On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 08:06:16PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> Most machines nowadays have enough memory, and most daemons provide a
> standalone mode (I mean who configures apache as an inetd service ?).
> Just looking at the packages requiring an inet superserver, you'll see that
> it's probably that nowadays users don't need a superserver at all[0].
>
> I'm wondering if making super servers become optionnal wouldn't be a worthy
> goal for squeeze.
I agree with this goal. One major lack in our current inetd support is
for services which should run on IPv6 (tcp6 and udp6). While the
current default inetd (openbsd-inetd) can support IPv6, in practice
no maintainer scripts are actually adding tcp6/udp6 lines to inetd.conf
in addition to tcp/udp lines. Additionally, not all inetds support
IPv6, so adding these lines will break some inetds.
While packages requiring inetd support will of course need to keep
inetd around, it would be nice if packages offering both inetd and
standalone operation could drop inetd support in favour of standalone
operation only (since starting up the server every time for e.g.
apache and even services like proftpd is less efficient than just
having the dæmon sleep when not in use).
Regards,
Roger
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03-11-2009, 05:12 AM
Lars Wirzenius
inetd's status in Debian
ke, 2009-03-11 kello 00:00 +0000, Roger Leigh kirjoitti:
> Additionally, not all inetds support
> IPv6, so adding these lines will break some inetds.
Should we consider lack of IPv6 support as a bug?
Ah yes, it's been a release goal since etch.
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inetd's status in Debian
