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cannot talk using "talk"

From Sanjib Roy

Answered By: Thomas Adam

how can i set up talk facility in my lan ( 1 server 9 clients with dns) when i want to talk to my server talk display folloing mesg remote host does not recognize us

[Thomas] Well... can you possibly start over and explain things in more detail? Only what you have provided is very little to go on, not to metion I am having to now make guesses as to what you're using...

The "talk" command is/was used initially by BSD to allow users on a LAN to talk to one another. But what you also need is talkd -- which is the remote user authentication tool. "Talkd" has to be spawned from inetd if it is to work, this something like the following [1]:

talk            dgram   udp     wait    nobody.tty      /usr/sbin/in.talkd      in.talkd
ntalk           dgram   udp     wait    nobody.tty      /usr/sbin/in.ntalkd     in.ntalkd

Then you must [re]start inetd:

# /etc/init.d/inetd restart

(note that of you are using RH/Fedora, the chances are you're using xinetd).

Then all you do is connect, using 'talk' (man pages help here).

One thing you should also know is that 'talk' is rather limited, and as such lots of alternatives exist. I'll name drop, although most are an enhancement on BSD-talk:

utalk
ytalk
etalk (emacs)
gtalk (GTK front-end)

but when i want to talk from one client to another client no connect is made

[Thomas] You need to be much more precise here. What errors are you getting? You don't even say which distribution you're using. Before you reply to this, as I hope you will, read the following:

http://linuxgazette.net/tag/ask-the-gang.html

PLEASE HELP ME

[Thomas] Sorry, but when you start demanding, my patience decreases. Don't do it. We owe you nothing. I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't come across as very good when you think that you should be placed above all others for help. I treat everyone with the same level of help, regardless of their 'issue'.

[1] This is from memory and so is possibly inaccurate. Either way, the entries may well already be installed into the file: /etc/inetd.conf - and if no such entries exist, those lines should be added to this file.

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