[arch-dev-public] Replacing common network programs (netkit-*, etc} with GNU inetutils

[Dan McGee]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Eric Bélanger
<belanger at astro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> As suggested in FS#12281, we could add inetutils to the repo to replace,
> among other things, the netkit-* packages which are no longer maintained
> upstream and mostly orphaned. Inetutils could potentially replace several
> packages either entirely or partially. Here is a list of network tool that
> inetutils can provide and the corresponding packages that it might replace.
> Discussion is below the list.
>
> Point A) If we decide to not replace parts of packages in the repo, then we
> disable syslogd, ping, ping6, logger and ifconfig.
> Point B) From Greg comments in FR, we should keep the current xinetd (best
> inet implementation) and
>        whois (actively maintained) standalone packages. So we disable inetd
> and whois.
>
> Let me know if you agree/disagree on following Point A & B.
A: I feel like we should leave ping/ping6 where they are (unless these
are drastically improved versions, which I doubt). Same with the other
things you named- I'd rather keep those out of it.
B: xinetd seems like a good inetd implementation, so I would stick
with it being standalone.

>
> Other points of discussion:
>
> tftp: inetutils'tftp is to be run via xinetd like netkit-tftp. tftp-hpa uses
> a rc.d daemon script. I don't know what is best and if it's something we
> should worry about. In fact, I don't know anything about xinetd so I'll need
> to read docs to get the daemon setup correctly. Does anyone has experience
> in xinetd-style daemon script?
>
> About the talk{d}: we recently moved netkit-talk to unsupported. Do we build
> them in inetutils?
Since it all comes in one package, it probably wouldn't hurt to build it.

> ftpd: do we add the ftp daemon? We already have several of these (probably
> better ones) in extra. There won't be any conflict so we could still add it.
>
> uucpd: I don't know what it does. Do we add it?
>
> Basically, this thread is to discuss if we add inetutils in the repo
> (probably in core as netkit-tenet is in core) and what tools the inetutils
> package should contain, i.e. what package should be replaced by it.

Of the big list, I would vote for the following:
ftp/ftpd, r*, telnet/telnetd, tftp/tftpd, uucp/uucpd (maybe?)