Virtual Private Server User Guide

Network Servers and Server Applications

Note: Xinetd comes preinstalled and configured to provide the 

services mentioned in this product documentation. Technical 

assistance is provided for turning these services on and off through 

the inetctl command and VAdmin interface as long as the /etc/

xinetd.conf file has not be manually edited. Technical assistance is 

not provided for customizing xinet's configuration. Root enabled 

customers are welcome to modify /etc/xinetd.conf, but upon doing 

so they assume responsibility for their own xinetd related issues. 

Controlling Xinetd

There are two ways that you can enable and disable the services that the xinetd 

application listens for: through the command line and through the VAdmin Web 

interface. This section focuses on controlling xinetd from the command line. For 

more information about controlling xinetd through the VAdmin Web interface, 

please see the VAdmin chapter of this guide.

The inetctl super command can be run from the command line to enable and 

disable the services that xinetd listens for as well as start, stop and restart the 

xinetd application itself. inetctl can be run by any member of the sysadmin group, 

and has the following syntax:

inetctl start

inetctl stop

inetctl restart

inetctl service on

inetctl service off

The service can be any of the services that xinetd is configured for. For a list of 

these services, type inetctl by itself.

Example 1: Disabling the Telnet service

As an example, suppose you wanted to disable the Telnet service to provide 

enhanced security for your server. To do so, you could type the following from the 

command prompt:

> inetctl telnet off

Example 2: Enabling the ntalk service

Suppose you wanted to enable the ntalk service, which allows your users to use 

talk, a command line chat program that can be used to chat with users logged into 

other UNIX servers on the Internet. By default, this service is disabled, but you 

can enable it with the following command:

> inetctl ntalk on

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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