[dev] Superservers: Yay or Nay?

From: Thomas Oltmann <thomas.oltmann.hhg_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2020 15:51:03 +0100

Hi, I hope everybody is doing well.
In the last couple of weeks I've been working on a small TCP server application.
It is intended to be used in situations where the typical amount of
requests is relatively low and traffic is infrequent.
At it's core, it's a simple fork-on-accept style server, much like quark.
Because the server will supposedly be idling for most of the time, I
thought it may be a good idea to separate the accept() loop
and the worker processes into separate executables so that the former
can be replaced by the user with a superserver like inetd/xinetd
or even systemd (because of course pid 1 has a built-in superserver
these days) to save on system resources when no traffic is happening.
However, after doing some research it seems like superservers have
pretty much fallen out of favor these days.
Also, from some back-of-the-envelope calculations I get the feeling
you won't be saving much CPU time or RAM usage this way
on modern machines anyway, but I might be wrong there.
So, what do you guys think?
Is superserver-compatibility a desirable feature for suckless server-software?
Does anybody know if they still help with reducing resource usage
(which is probably the only reason for using one)?
Is anybody here using a superserver like inetd for anything anymore?

Cheers,
          Thomas Oltmann
Received on Mon Mar 23 2020 - 15:51:03 CET