I was thinking about this and wonder if it might be best to have something like /etc/xinetd.d/* where you have a number of services defined, each in their own file, and by default most of them are disabled. That way if a sysadmin wants a machine to become a CAD workstation, he changes the "false" to "true" in a file like /etc/yum.d/cadgroup.conf Trying to think in terms of large scale deployments, and allowing dept. sysadmins to add new configurations without having to touch the central MIS-owned configuration in environments where you have centralized deployment with some local department level support.