Weekend Project: Replace Inetd with Xinetd for Better Network Administration

“Xinetd is an alternative to the traditional super-server
Internet daemon, inetd, the process that starts and stops all
non-persistent network servers. Xinetd acts as a drop-in
replacement for inetd, but it can do more than just start and stop
services on your Linux machine in response to incoming TCP or UDP
connections. The real advantage of Xinetd is that it allows more
fine-grained control, including access control lists (ACLs),
rate-limiting, time-based access, and stream redirection.

“Xinetd is packaged by all major Linux distributions, so you can
install it through the package management system. Barring that, you
can download the latest release from xinetd.org and compile it with
the usual ./configure; make; sudo make install process. There are
no unusual dependencies to speak of. The only particular risk you
undertake installing it if your distribution marks it as
conflicting with the inetd package so that you cannot have both
installed at the same time. Back up your /etc/inetd.conf file
before you proceed.”

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