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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: inetd in perl
Message-ID: <8652@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 9 Jul 90 22:52:51 GMT
References: <1990Jul7.030248.11160@fxgrp.fx.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 51

In article <1990Jul7.030248.11160@fxgrp.fx.com> grady@postgres.berkeley.edu writes:
: Because I don't think I'll be spending much time hacking on this in the
: near future, I figured I'd post this now.  This is a version of inetd
: written in perl.  It parses BSD/SunOS-style inetd.conf files. It is
: intended to allow individual (non-root type) users to run their own
: servers -- a feature sorely lacking in standard versions.  Other
: than allowing you to specify your own configuration file, it supports
: numbered services as well as names.  It handles tcp (stream) and udp
: (dgram), wait and nowait sockets.  No RPC or internal services.  The
: two main problems are that it doesn't set the uid (trivial to add, but
: I don't have the time or the need), and it can't set argv[0] (since
: perl doesn't seem to let you do that). The closest I've come is to
: replace argv[0] in the command with the specified server.  This may or
: may not be adequate.

From the manual:

             If you don't really want to execute the first argu-
             ment, but want to lie to the program you are execut-
             ing about its own name, you can specify the program
             you actually want to run by assigning that to a
             variable and putting the name of the variable in
             front of the LIST without a comma.  (This always
             forces interpretation of the LIST as a multi-valued
             list, even if there is only a single scalar in the
             list.) Example:

                  $shell = '/bin/csh';
                  exec $shell '-sh';       # pretend it's a login shell


So, in your case, instead of

 	exec split(' ', $command{$service});

you want to say

 	($realname,@args) = split(' ', $command{$service});
	exec $realname @args;

and of course add the extra field back into your inetd.conf.

The reason for this weird usage is that it's actually just piggy-backed
onto the syntax that lets you say

	print $filehandle LIST;

It's a little odd but it helps keep the size of the yacc file within reason.
Well, closer to being within reason, anyway.

Larry