It seemed a bit strange to me as well. But what I've noticed - and it
may be because my information comes from a limited discussion group
(i.e. qmail list) - is that they don't talk about using tcpserver for
*every* service, just an isolated few that aren't really going to be
idle, like web, pop, smtp. Lower volume services (if there are any
others enabled on the machine) are still handled by inetd.  Also, it
gives you the ability to use multihoming, i.e. say you're running a mail
server for multiple domains with different IP's for their mail servers
defined, you run one tcpserver for qmail-smtp #1 on IP#1 and another for
qmail-smtp #2 on IP#2, etc.  Again, I'm a newbie so it's grain of salt
time, but isn't inetd an all or nothing type wrapper (all use of port x
regardless of what IP address it comes to (in multihome system)),
without the granularity that tcpserver affords you?  

"Thomas, Mark" wrote:
> Aside: As far as running a seperate tcpserver process for every service,
> doesn't that seem like a waste?  I know of tcpserver's reported benefits
> over inetd/tcpd (hence my interest), but switching from a single inetd
> instance to a whole host of often-idle tcpserver instances doesn't seem much
> like progress to me.  IMHO.