Difference between init.d, xinetd and running service as a dameon

jstephens84 · 09-13-2004, 05:49 PM

I am going through the linux bible to try and understand what a Dameon is and what is the difference is between running it as stand-alone, xinetd, and init.d. any help at all will be greatly appreicated. It is getting confusing but I am liking it so much that I refuse to go back to windows xp.

michaelk · 09-13-2004, 06:19 PM

A daemon is another name for a service or process that runs in the background like Apache, proftp, crond etc...

A standalone process is one that is running all of the time. If you look at top you will see all of the processes running. /etc/init.d contains the startup scripts for all of these processes.

xinetd is a special process that controls other daemons. The services controled by xineted only run when they are needed to min resources. See man pages xinetd for more info