The inetd Daemon

We've explained above how to write a server program that does its own listening. Such a server must already be running in order for anyone to connect to it.

Another way to provide service for an Internet port is to let the daemon program inetd do the listening. inetd is a program that runs all the time and waits (using select) for messages on a specified set of ports. When it receives a message, it accepts the connection (if the socket style calls for connections) and then forks a child process to run the corresponding server program. You specify the ports and their programs in the file `/etc/inetd.conf'.

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