[ILUG] POP AS A SYSTEM SERVICE

[Caolan McNamara]

On 18-Oct-99 AJ Mc Kee wrote:
>Hi All
>
>I was wondering how to set up pop as a system service. Well I started to do it
>this way. I am using RH6. I copied one of the init scripts and replaced the
>daemon with the ipop3d (The script was the apache startup script) Now all goes
>well and fine but for I can get no further that this message
>
>"+OK POP3 somehost.somedomain.ie v7.59 server ready"
>
>Thats it. It just runs and does not allow me to go to the shell. I'd have to
>kill it first. So i tried it with the -d switch, nope not working. And I tried
>the man pages (None found despite having done a complete install cos I'm lazy)
>
>So I was wondering if anybody does have a pop server running as a service and
>not being called from inetd.conf.
>
>I have included the start up script I used.
>
>Thanks
>Anton

You are just on a loser here, the ipop3d is not designed to be run as such a 
service. Inetd listens for connections to a socket and spawns a program off
to handle each connection, each program spawned off can handle only one
connection at a time, and comes to an end when the connection ends. Some
programs can do the work of inetd themselves by spawning off a seperate copy
to handle each incoming connection, which is what apache does. But ipop3d is
not able to, so even the first time someone connects and quits the pop
connection then ipop3d will quit itself. Also if there were a multiple 
simultaneous connections then these will fail as well as ipop3d can only 
handle one at a time. And finally the reason ipop3d is actually doing what it 
is in the script above is that when not run from inetd it goes into testing 
mode and accepts input from stdin rather than through a network socket, so you 
can type in the pop commands directly into it, i.e. QUIT HELP PASS RETR etc...

The basic answer is that apache and a few others are special cases, practically
all of the programs in inetd.conf will not work correctly without being
spawned off by inetd itself for each individual incoming connection.

Is there a reason you wanted to do this ? 

C.

Real Life: Caolan McNamara           *  Doing: MSc in HCI
Work: Caolan.McNamara at ul.ie          *  Phone: +353-86-8790257
URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan    *  Sig: an oblique strategy
Just carry on