Although using ProtoWrap is not hard, the user must know some Perl programming in order to configure it. The author's goal is to improve ProtoWrap until it reaches a usability level similar to the inetd daemon: Having a simple to understand configuration for wrappers in standalone mode, in a format such as the following:
79 pipe /usr/sbin/in.fingerd
143 ip 192.168.10.34:50143
Of course, this would have to be adapted in order to handle protocol-specific extensions, such as the ones provided for SMTP or POP3. Maybe a better syntax would follow the one introduced by xinetd, which uses blocks instead of lines for each service's configuration. A configuration similar to the one proposed below would become:
finger {
listenPort = 79
destType = pipe
pipeCmd = /usr/sbin/in.fingerd
}
imap {
listenPort = 143
destType = ip
destAddr = 192.168.10.34
destPort = 50143
}
Configuration files would, of course, become longer. A quick overview of the configuration would be harder to achieve, but the format allows for a much more flexible and extensible syntax, able to grow as new extensions are developed or new capabilities are added to the base class.
Any chosen way will make ProtoWrap much more attractive and easy to use for novice systems administrators, and reduce the errors in which even seasoned administrators would fall if the configuration had to be coded in Perl.