If you never heared about PInetd, it probably means you never tried to search on google how to make a DNS server in PHP, for example.
PInetd is a generic framework allowing to run a wide range of daemons, mostly answering on TCP or UDP ports.
The main goal is to make generic protocol interfaces that can easily be overloaded to implement new features, new auth mechanism, etc… For example the FTP daemon is extended as FTPd_SQL for SQL auth.
The pinetd2 project is under development since October 4th 2007 (will be 2 years old soon), and has reached an appreciable maturity level. Most bugs were cleared and right now the system is running well. Some expected features (http admin interface, transports, etc) are not completed yet, but should appear within the next weeks, before the first official release with version 2.0.0.
PInetd includes framework tools to easily make a daemon listening on a TCP or UDP port, and also include some pre-made modules: FTP, HTTP, Mails (pop/smtp), DNS, NetBatch…
While official documentation is still mostly missing, previous posts here explain how to configure a DNS daemon, and the wiki contains basic documentation.
The official PInetd website is now open, and it is possible to subscribe to news feed to receive updates either by RSS or by mail.
