Hi Joerg,
On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 09:59:11AM +0200, Joerg Dorchain wrote:
> Package: tftpd-hpa
> Version: 5.2+20140608-3
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Hello,
>
> I prefer to run tftpd-hpa from inetd.
Just for my own better understanding of who uses this how, and why,
can I ask what your reasons for that are?
> Unfortunately, the provided config and init scripts start it
> unconditionally as standalone.
Apparently there used to be support for this, but it was removed in
2009, and Daniel noted in the changelog:
* Now running always in daemon mode, it is too error prone and messy
to support inetd mode (Closes: #272882, #275514, #437651, #503120,
#505335, #505367, #535212, #537476).
I haven't looked at what the real problems with this were myself in any
detail (aside from noting that sure is a long list of bugs :), but my
own initial thoughts on this go something like:
- tftpd is tiny, weighing around 300k in RSS when it isn't swapped out
because nothing is using it and something else really needs that last
ounce of memory. If you haven't already disabled all of the several
tmpfs mounts you get by default these days, this one is the least of
your worries for "wasted" memory on a modern machine.
- inetd itself is potentially Not Long For This World anymore. You'd
have a rather hard time installing and running the jessie release on
any of the sort of resource limited machines that were the problem
it was invented to solve. These days fast, large disks are ordinary
and whether you store your idle daemons in swap or on the filesystem
proper doesn't make a whole lot of real difference to the system
resources that remain available for active tasks.
- Even if the last point wasn't true, for jessie systemd will be the
default init, and since it's basically just a glorified reinvention
of inetd itself, running as PID1, that's probably the last nail in
its coffin now. If someone really wants this mode, a better change
would probably be to offer a 'socket activation' unit for it now,
which is just a fancy word and different location for 'inetd.conf'.
I'll take a patch for that if somebody has the interest to make and
test one.
But that said ...
> I would appreciate inetd support in the maintainer scipts, or if
> that is too complex,
this:
> an option to install tftpd-hpa but not start
> it by default, e.g. in /etc/default/tftpd-hpa TFTP_START=no
is already possible. Just put 'exit 0' into that file and the init
script won't start it. It's just sourced as a shell snippet, so you
can abort its action there any way you like (or use update-rc.d to
change the runlevels that it is started in to suit what you need).
So unless you have some compelling reason I haven't thought of for
why inetd itself isn't now living on borrowed time, I'm inclined to
think the time for adding support for it to this package is now
somewhat long past ... though it is still fairly trivial to add it
manually yourself for anyone who really wants that for a bit longer.
Cheers,
Ron
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