inetd and SMF

The internet daemon, , listens on ports for network service requests. When a request arrives it starts the appropriate service. Before Solaris 10 services under control of inetd were configured using the  /etc/inet/inetd.conf file.
In Solaris 10inetd still has the same function, but network services are now configured using SMF (see SMF components).


Runninig inetconv will convert all inetd.conf services to SMF services and enable them. When Solaris 10 boots for the first time it will run inetconv -e.This options does not convert services to SMF, but only enables inetd.conf services that already exist in SMF.

In the SMF manifest files for network services, you can see that SMF delegates management to inetd. Here are some lines from /var/svc/manifest/network/ftp.xml (S10u7):

       <restarter>
                <service_fmri value='svc:/network/inetd:default' />
      </restarter>

inetadm will list all services under inetd control. It has options that allow you to do things similar to svcadm and svccfg.