Kerberos xinetd Configuration

Red Hat Linux prefers xinetd to inetd, as do other Linux distributions. Some offer it as an option and some system administrators prefer it. It is also sometimes used on other versions of UNIX instead of the classic inetd daemon.

inetd uses a simple configuration file with one line for each service. xinetd uses a separate file for each service, with more complex settings. xinetd configuration for the Kerberos servers for rlogin and rsh may not be included with your Linux distribution, so here are samples that you can use.

These files should be saved into the xinetd configuration location (generally /etc/xinetd.d) and named after the service. You will need to also add the relevant services to /etc/services if they are not already present. The lines to put in /etc/services are:

    eklogin         2105/tcp                # Kerberos encrypted rlogin
    kshell          544/tcp         krcmd   # Kerberized `rsh' (v5)

You only need configuration files for the services you are going to use. If you want to disable a service, change the disable line to:

    disable = yes

After adding these configuration files, you must restart the xinetd daemon in order for the new configuration to take effect. You can usually use the command skill -USR1 xinetd, or can restart xinetd via its init script.

Configuration for the rlogin server:

service eklogin
{
    flags           = REUSE
    socket_type     = stream
    wait            = no
    user            = root
    server          = /usr/sbin/klogind
    server_args     = -5ec
    disable         = no
}

Configuration for the rsh server (also used for rcp):

service kshell
{
    flags           = REUSE
    socket_type     = stream
    wait            = no
    user            = root
    server          = /usr/sbin/kshd
    server_args     = -5ec
    disable         = no
}

Change the server line if klogind and kshd are in a different location on your system.

Thanks to Andrew Stacey for providing us with this information.