Bug 92260

Summary:	Error in manpage for xinetd.conf
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	ingvar
Component:	xinetd	Assignee:	Jay Fenlason <fenlason>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	9	CC:	jfeeney
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2003-06-04 14:38:56 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description ingvar 2003-06-04 09:47:37 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516
Mozilla Firebird/0.6

Description of problem:
Following the manpage of xinetd.conf, the variable "instances" has an unlimited
value if not set. This is certainly untrue. With telnet for example, you reach a
maximum of 60 parallell telnet sessions, and then xinetd prohibits login.

Setting 'instances = UNLIMITED' solves the problem, but the manpage says this is
not necessary.

This has been reported earlier, already in RedHat 7.1, see bug 78074

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xinetd-2.3.11-1.9.0

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Enable telnetd from /etc/xinetd.d/telnet
2.Fire some telnet sessions (more than 60) and look in /var/log/secure
3.Read xinetd.conf(5) and scratch head
    

Actual Results:  From /var/log/secure:
xinetd[...]: fail: telnet service_limit from=ip ...

Server disconnects
xinetd.conf manpage lies

Expected Results:  xinetd.conf should provide accurate information about the
'instances' configuration item.

Additional info:

This is an old bug that's easy to fix. Just do it. Even better: Include the
following line to the standard xinetd.d files:

instances = UNLIMITED

Comment 1 Jay Fenlason 2003-06-04 14:38:56 UTC

Did you remove the "instances = 60" from /etc/xinetd.conf ?  The man page
describes xinetd's default behavior, but /etc/xinetd.conf and the files in
/etc/xinetd.d naturally override it.  /etc/xinetd.conf sets "instances = 60" and
"cps = 25 30", among other defaults.

These defaults are clearly not appropriate for all environments.  For all of my
machines, they're an order of magnititude too high.  For other environments
they're too low.  Nothing will suit everyone.