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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!uunet!in3.uu.net!128.230.129.106!news.maxwell.syr.edu!chippy.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!dimensional.com!flatland.dimensional.com!not-for-mail From: mfuhr@dimensional.com (Michael Fuhr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: What's the difference between inetd.conf and rc.local? Date: 18 Jun 1997 20:17:35 -0600 Organization: Dimensional Communications Lines: 26 Message-ID: <5oa4rv$ekp@flatland.dimensional.com> References: <33a87ec8.2658713@news4.odn.ne.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: flatland.dimensional.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43130 luoht@usa.net (Michael Law) writes: > Some services ( such as POP3 ) are started by adding a line to the > 'inetd.conf' file. But when I install IRCD, I have to start it within > 'rc.local'. What's the difference between these files? Is there any > other way to start a service when the system boot? Services in inetd.conf don't run all the time -- inetd listens on all the enabled ports and forks a server to handle incoming requests; this server usually exits when it's finished. For infrequently-used services, this can conserve system resources by not having a lot of idle daemons hanging around. See the inetd(8) manual page for more info. Daemons started from rc.local (or from a file in rc.d) typically run all the time. Reasons for this could be the need to continuously monitor something, or to speed up the processing of incoming requests without having to go through the fork/exec overhead (though many do fork and let the child handle the request, while the parent listens for another). Hope this helps. -- Michael Fuhr http://www.dimensional.com/~mfuhr/