restarting xinetd

[Rick Stevens]

don wrote:
> I added a new "service definition" to /etc/xinetd.d directory and now I
> want to restart xinetd so the new definition is picked up.
> 
> How can I tell if xinetd actually restarted?
> I use su - to get to root, then kill -s SIGHUP <pid>
> where <pid> is the pid for xinetd as returned by ps -A|grep inet
> 
> I was expecting some messages like "xinetd shutting down/restarting", but
> the kill command just ends and I'm back at a command prompt.
> 
> Then I thought maybe it does it "quietly", but the pid number never
> changed.... maybe it just re-reades the config file without saying
> anything...

Sending a SIGHUP to xinetd doesn't kill it and restart it.  xinetd
specifically traps SIGHUP.  When it receives the signal, it rereads
its config file, drops connections to services that are no longer
enabled, verifies that existing connections are OK based on any new
access restrictions, and drops arbitrary connections to match limits
on a given service.  The same old xinetd is running, but with a new
configuration.

xinetd logs via syslogd to the /var/log/messages file.  If you examine
that file, you'll see xinetd telling you what is going on.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-  Jimmie crack corn and I don't care...what kind of lousy attitude  -
-                 is THAT to have, huh?   -- Dennis Miller           -
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