[ntp:questions] OT: Solaris help - TOD service

Peter Laws plaws at ou.edu
Fri Jun 13 14:18:50 UTC 2008


David J Taylor wrote:

> Is there any good reason for inetd "to be switched off as a security
> measure"?  Could the TOD service be provided stand-alone, instead of
> within inetd?  Perhaps not....

The services inetd calls are generally obsolete (rsh, rdate, telnet etc) or 
nearly so (ftp).  As a general rule, admins either comment everything out 
or disable inetd entirely.  Real, modern daemons, like sshd and httpd, run 
all the time and don't need to be called on demand.

As noted, a bunch of the old "really cool in 1983" protocols like echo 
(port 7), discard  (8), daytime (13), or the coolest of them all in 1983, 
chargen (19).  Telnet to these ports on a Solaris box, especially one that 
doesn't have Solaris 10, and you can see the wild and wonderful things they 
generate.

You could, conceivably, remove everything else and just leave daytime 
configured ... but you've got to ask yourself "Why aren't they using NTP?"


-- 
Peter Laws / N5UWY
National Weather Center / Network Operations Center
University of Oklahoma Information Technology
plaws at ou.edu
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