Re: [Exim] exim & intetd

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Author: Kevin Sindhu
Date:  
To: Philip Hazel
CC: nick slussar, exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] exim & intetd
Moin Philip!
Philip Hazel schrieb am Thursday, den 27. December 2001:
> On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, nick slussar wrote:


> Unfortunately I don't subscribe to debian-russian. This is the first
> I've heard of this problem.


If you are referring this problem, Philip; it came up sometime ago
when a few tried to see why exim became an open relay when run from
inetd. This however did not effect other OS's such a OpenBSD(I checked
this)....

> > suggested simple fix is to call getpeername always, without
> > relying on uid combination.


> But that would mean that any unprivileged user could call Exim and
> pass it a socket on its standard input, and it would think it was
> being called from inetd. Seems to me that that is an undesirable
> situation.


Very True.

However, I feel compelled to rant about the support via inetd. Simply
put, I dislike it...but I guess that's just IMHO. However, is there a
reason to have support via inetd in the first place? Other than the
fact that you may wish to run a MTA out of inetd/xinetd due to limited
system resources...but if you don't have enough resources, why run a
MTA in the first place...

Its trivial to crash inetd via a nice DoS (I've sent a few mails
regarding this to netbsd@/openbsd@), and xinetd is nicer but not
really a good option to run a mail server....

My 2 Euro's (Now where do I find that new key?)

-Kevin

--
People need good lies.  There are too many bad ones.
        -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.