I would like to start a web server on-demand as an inetd "tcp/wait" service which shuts itself down after a programmable period of inactivity.
Many web servers already support inetd "tcp/nowait" mode, but this mode has the disadvantage that a new process needs to be forked for every new connection. It is therefore slower and more resource-intensive than running a dedicated server daemon.
A web server supporting inetd's "tcp/wait" would only be launched by inetd for the first request, then serve any number of requests using the same server instance until no requests occurred for some period of idle time, in which case the server instance automatically terminates and lets inetd start it again once the next period of activity starts.
Such a tcp/wait inetd web server should have approximately the same efficiency as a dedicated web server (i. e. running permanently) during times of activity. However, it will automatically shut down in times of inactivity, saving system resources.
Irregular "anti-demand"-driven shutdowns will also clean up any memory leaks from the web server and possibly associated FGCI-services (which would terminate together with the web server).
I know that it is already possible to use systemd's socket activation in combination with lighttpd's -i option to implement what I want.
However, I want a solution that also works without systemd, depending on nothing else than a running Internet superserver no matter how the latter one has been started (inetd/xinetd started by sysvinit, runit, manually, or systemd's socket activation replacing inetd/xinetd).