I've never really used xinetd; but here's some guesses based on what I know: > What is the best way to remove particular xinetd services from a box? I can > turn the service off, but would prefer to remove them entirely. delete the file for the service in /etc/xinetd.d/ > Can someone enlighten me on why certain services are run out of xinetd.d > vs init.d? Or point me to a URL explaining. Thank you. init.d is for daemons. xinetd replaces inetd; which is a 'super-daemon', which starts an instance of a service when someone makes a request for it. so if you didn't want to spend the memory and CPU resources to keep an FTP daemon running; you could just run it out of inetd/xinetd, and a process for it would only be started on those occasions when someone requests it. inetd/xinetd also use the 'tcpwrappers' library to control access to services; so you can put entries in /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny to allow or deny requests for those services that the super-daemon controls. (much easier than ipchains/iptables; tho not as universally useful). you can also play tricks like putting the following line in your /etc/inetd.conf file: telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /bin/cat /dev/urandom which will cause a stream of random characters to be spewed at anyone who tries telnetting to your box. :) I'm sure there's a similar thing to do for xinetd. Carl Soderstrom -- Network Engineer Real-Time Enterprises (952) 943-8700