How To Tell If Your Linux Server Uses xinetd OR inetd sever

Q. How to tell if my Linux server is using xinetd or inetd service?

A. inetd is also known as super-server daemon and it runs on many Unix / Linux systems that manages Internet service such as ftp or pop3 or telnet.

xinetd (eXtended InterNET Daemon) is also an open-source daemon which runs on many Unix / Linux systems and manages Internet-based services such as ftp or telnet.

You can use netstat or ps command to find out if Linux / UNIX server using xinetd or inetd server:
# ps aux | egrep '[xi]netd'
OR
# netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN | egrep '[xi]netd'
Sample output:

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:23              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     8552/inetd

OR

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:904                 0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      5271/xinetd

Usually,

• RHEL / CentOS / Fedora Linux runs xinetd.
• *BSD / Debian / Ubuntu Linux / Mac OS X runs inetd.
• Default inetd configuration file location /etc/inetd.conf
• Default xinetd configuration file location /etc/xinetd.conf

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