[KLUG Members] Talk

[Peter Buxton]

On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 09:13:12AM -0400, Jeremy Leonard was only escaped
   alone to tell thee:

> [jeremy@elite jeremy]$ ls -l /dev/pts
> crw-------    1 valm     tty      136,   0 May 29 08:59 0
> crw--w----    1 jeremy   tty      136,   1 May 29 09:00 1
> [jeremy@elite jeremy]$ ls -l /dev/tty
> crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       5,   0 May 28 08:47 /dev/tty

So this is your remote server, right? The one on which you wish to talk
to other users also logged onto it? I'm assuming you're ssh'ing into
this server?

User jeremy is set up to use talk(1), valm isn't. `mesg y/n` is used to
control the group write permission for group tty.

No one's logged onto /dev/tty. Standard linux consoles run on
/dev/tty1-6, and the Xserver runs on, or hooks on, rather, /dev/tty7.

One thing I noticed is that X11 introduces problems with logging. If I
crank up another xterm and `su - ` I am not listed in the output of
lastlog(8) as logged into root. Also, a user on /dev/tty1 cannot 'see'
my xterm session on /dev/pts/1, but I can see him or her.

> service talk
> {
>         disable = no
>         socket_type             = dgram
>         wait                    = yes
>         user                    = nobody
>         group                   = tty
>         server                  = /usr/sbin/in.talkd
> }

I installed talkd on my Debian system running inetd, xinetd's precursor.
It's interesting that Debian's has both talk and ntalk protocols running
with the same binary. Hmmm. Run `netstat -lu`, just out of curiosity.

Frankly, I enjoy the Debian man page for talk:

BUGS
     The protocol used to communicate with the talk daemon is braindead.

     Also, the version of talk(1) released with 4.2BSD uses a different
     and even more braindead protocol that is completely incompatible.

Heh, heh.

-- 
-111
Black Ops. Silent, undetected and above all
*untraceable* acts of system administration.