Here's an interesting message I found in my logs:
inetd[128]: auth/tcp server failing (looping), service terminated
I had no idea what it meant. But if you read man inetd, it explains
it:
service/protocol server failing (looping), service terminated. The number of requests
for the specified service in the past minute ex- ceeded the limit. The limit exists to
prevent a broken program or a ma- licious user from swamping the system. This message may
occur for sever- al reasons:
1. There are many hosts requesting the service within a short time period.
2. A broken client program is requesting the service too fre- quently.
3. A malicious user is running a program to invoke the service in a denial-of-service
attack.
4. The invoked service program has an error that causes clients to retry quickly.
Use the -R rate option, as described above, to change the rate limit. Once the limit is
reached, the service will be reenabled automatically in 10 minutes.
Essentially, inetd is getting more requests for the auth service than it has
been told to handle. The auth service is handled by identd on my box. |
