Section: Maintenance Commands (8)Updated: 1995 April 11Local indexUp
NAME
gtalkd - GNU talk daemon
SYNOPSIS
gtalkd
[
-bfghsStv --version
]
DESCRIPTION
gtalkd
is a talk daemon which is fully compatible with
ntalkd
which is the
BSD
talk daemon.
gtalkd
provides a talk service via the internet. A user may use a
talk client
to send a UDP message to
gtalkd
which will then provide the services of storing invitations, and making
announcements to a user's terminal.
Command line switches are:
-b, --bsd
Emulate the BSD post 4.2 talk protocol by not accepting any GNU talk
protocol extensions.
-f, --forever
Open a socket and loop on it forever. Unlike running under inetd
during which stdin and stdout provides the socket necessary for
communication, this option lets the talk daemon run as a separate self
supporting process.
-g, --gnu
Run using the GNU talk protocol extensions. This is the default.
-h, --help
Print process help.
-s, --sun
Simulate the pre BSD 4.2 talk protocol which is commonly found on
SunOS and Solaris.
-S, --sunforward
This option is run as an extended option for the --sun option.
Instead of acting as a daemon and answering requests, all requests are
sent to the n/gtalk daemon on the same machine. Answers are received
and forwarded back the the requester.
-t, --tty
Send all error and verbose messages to the controlling TTY. In
addition, create and bind the correct socket by hand instead of
inheriting it through stdin and stdout.
-v, --verbose
Print out verbose information, or verbose syslog information.
--version
Print out the current version of gtalkd.
INSTALLATION
The GNU talk daemon can be placed in a system bin such as
/usr/sbin
or
/usr/local/sbin
and then installed in the
inetd.conf
file in place of the normal talk daemon which may be found there. The
resulting configuration in
inetd.conf
should contain the following lines:
In addition, if you are installing on SunOS or Solaris, you will have
to make it aware of the ntalk service. This service is found in
/etc/services.
Simply find the line which says:
talk517/udp
and add the line
ntalk518/udp
right after it.
FILES
/etc/inetd.conf
Contains definitions for the Internet Super Server to start gtalkd.
/etc/services
This file contains information relating names socket/service
information to names. It is used to determine the "[n]talk" socket
used when in forever mode.
/etc/passwd
Accessing /etc/passwd in the usual way allows
gtalkd
to determine a users home directory to read their personal ringer
file. The ringer file allows
gtalkd
to forward announcements directly to an interested process.
~/.ringer
Different individuals may start applications which create and manage
this file. The file contains a UDP socket definition which allows
gtalkd
to automatically pass the announcement information directly to a
process which cares.
~/.talkfilter
This is read by gtalkd to determine of a pattern matches an incomming call
for the callee. If it does, then the requested response is returned.
A pattern is of the form
The username is a string which must match the incomming caller's id exactly.
The hostname can be a substring of the caller's host name to match.
One of username or hostname can be blank, which conflicts defaulting first to
username only matches, and then to complete username,hostname combinations.
Valid DENY_METHODS are
ALLOW
, which allows a pattern to announce to you, and
NOT_HERE
, which cause
gtalkd
to predent you are not logged on.
In addition,
FAILED
sends a failure message, and
PERMISSION_DENIED
pretends that you have permissions turned off on your tty.
Lastly,
SELECTIVE_REFUSAL
means to send a specific message back saying that you have chosen to
specifically prevent that person from calling you.
If their client is not GTALK compliant, then it is downgraded to
PERMISSION_DENIED
/etc/utmp, /var/adm/utmp
Different locations of utmp which contain login information for
different users. This file is referenced to determine which TTY
device to open in order to write an announcement message.
/dev/tty*
Terminal devices users are attached to. These devices are opened in
order to write an announcement message.
The newest version of gtalkd can be found within the etalk
distribution. As of the writing of this manual, it can be found on
ftp.ultranet.com:/pub/zappo/gtalk-*.tar.gz