Changes to hosts.allow do no affect to inetd daemons some times

[Olivier Nicole]

>  Sometimes when I change my /etc/hosts.allow and kill and start again
> inetd, there is no difference. It's like I haven't edited
> /etc/hosts.allow. If I continue making changes and stop/start inetd there
> are no affections to the inetd daemons, they allow or deny as
> /etc/hosts.allow isn't modified since inetd was first started after the
> system bootstrapped.

My guess would be that some of the servers started with inetd are
still up-and running.

Remember that tcpwrapper will filter connection initiated through
inetd. If, say, your ftp server is runing and handling requests, it
will not be affected by your changes in hosts.allow. Your FTP server
does not know that tcpwrapper is ther actually.

So at same time you kill -HUp inetd, you should also kill all the
services started by inetd and that are running.

SSH does access tcpwrapper by itself, so it is not affected by this
behaviour.

Bests,

olivier