Re: Talk broken?

[Gerald Jensen <gerry@blue.intele.net>]

On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I don't seem to be able to use talk at all.  Every attempt
> just gives the error message:
> 
>  [Couln't bind to control socket : cannot assign requested address (99)]

I experienced something similar.  I *think* it was caused by changes to
the 1.3.* kernel (when they changed the /proc filesystem).  This was my
problem:  I assigned my machine some hostname, then connected to my PPP or
SLIP server which would assign me a different IP address (and hostname). 
This conflict was what was confusing and killing talk.  I *think* that
with earlier kernels, talk would function correctly even if the hostname
assigned to the machine, and the hostname assigned by the PPP/SLIP server
was different. 

The fix: if you are assigned the same IP address every time by your
PPP/SLIP server, put the hostname for that address in /etc/hostname and 
reboot.  If you are assigned a different one each time, then, once you 
find out what it is, login as root and do: 

echo ASSIGNED_HOSTNAME > /proc/hostname

(note: you can only assign the hostname this way with the latest 1.3.* 
kernels)

Actually, I'm not 100% sure if it's /proc/hostname or 
/proc/SOMETHING/hostname as I'm not on that machine right now to look.  
But if you look around the /proc filesystem, you should find it.

Then you must log out and back in and then talk should work.  At least it
did for me. 

Regards,

Gerry
gerry@blue.intele.net