Re: bringing /etc/services up to date

On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 10:25:58AM -0700 I heard the voice of
Brooks Davis, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> Can you check how much this change slows down inetd startup with a
> few services enabled?  The traditional argument against this is that
> reading the whole IANA service file takes too long.  If the
> difference isn't measurable, the the argument is bogus, but I'm not
> sure that's the case.  The alternative solution would be to add
> optional database backing.  That shouldn't be too hard to do, and
> there are several examples to work from.

In theory, any program reading the data should be using
getservby{name,port}() and friends, since it avoids code duplication
and handles NIS and such already.  So, hashing it into a DB and fixing
those functions to match would probably work.  When this has been
brought up in the past, there's been expressed concern that a number
of programs don't, and piddle with the file manually, so while they
could still read the flatfile, they'd be in the dumps on performance
as the file grew.  AFAIK, nobody's even done any exhaustive testing of
whether that really happens, or how much gain hashing would give.


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd_at_over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"