starting a service on use

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> So really, if you want a service, run it all the time, unless it supports
> inetd, in which case it can handle it.

That's a pretty good answer.

If someone really doesn't want the service automatically started, they
might look into "port knocking" as an approach...

Basically, you have a service (possibly xinetd-based, or watching logs
for port denials) which watches for someone knocking at some sequence
of ports.  If it sees this, it starts up the "real" service.

But that requires a funky protocol addition for the client that was
going to try to connect; it needs to be modified to "knock on the
door" first.  Which is quite likely to be an unacceptable imposition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_knocking

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