The configuration file for xinetd is /etc/xinetd.conf. Most often, that file contains just a few lines that set default configuration parameters for the rest of the services:

# cat /etc/xinetd.conf
defaults
{
    instances      = 60
    log_type       = SYSLOG authpriv
    log_on_success = HOST PID
    log_on_failure = HOST RECORD
}
includedir /etc/xinetd.d

The last line in that file instructs xinetd to read additional configuration from file snippets in the /etc/xinetd.d directory. Let's take a quick glance at the telnet snippet:

# cat /etc/xinetd.d/telnet
service telnet
{
    flags          = REUSE
    socket_type    = stream        
    wait           = no
    user           = root
    server         = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
    log_on_failure += USERID
}

As you can see, it's not hard to configure xinetd, and it's more intuitive than inetd. You can get lots more information about xinetd in the xinetd(8), xinetd.conf(5), and xinetd.log(5) man pages.

There's also lots of information on the Web regarding inetd, tcp_wrappers, and xinetd. Be sure to check out some of the links we've provided for these tools in the last section of this tutorial, Resources; they will give you a much better feel for the capability and configuration of these tools.