"The classic inetd daemon has been around for a long time. There are several ways to replace its functionality, but the most flexible and easiest way seems to be xinetd. Xinetd does all the things inetd can do, and a lot more. TCP wrapping, modular configuration, connection redirection, and load limits on incoming connections are just a few of the features that make xinetd a nice choice for system administrators.
This article is meant for the beginner to intermediate system administrator and the explanations and examples will try not to assume that you are already familiar with inetd. In this article we will look at some simple uses of xinetd, from installation to implementation of security policies.
For the purposes of this article, ideally your system should be a recent (2000 or later) mainstream UNIX (Linux, Solaris, BSD) installation. The examples may work with earlier versions of Perl and UNIX, and other operating systems, but their failure to function should be considered an exercise for the reader to solve. The specific examples given are for Red Hat Linux, but they should work (with the exception of chkconfig) on other systems as well."
