Re: 'talk' does not work

[Rick Jones <rickya@siservices.net>]

On Sat, 10 May 1997, Eugene Sevinian wrote:

> As I know in order to allow some service to work I should
> put corresponding string in /etc/hosts.allow and now it looks like :
> in.ftpd: ALL
> in.telnetd: ALL
> in.rlogind: ALL
> in.talkd: ALL
> in.fingerd: ALL
> 
> However everything is working but 'talk'. It hangs with:
> [Checking for invitation on caller's machine].
> 
> What did I do wrong? Thank you in advance,

I don't think hosts.allow works that way.
Example:
ALL: .foobar.edu EXCEPT terminalserver.foobar.edu

Allows all hosts at domain foobar.edu except the machine named
terminalserver to access your system.

Try ytalk instead of talk and see if you get an error to the effect "host
unknown".  If you do the problem may be that your hostname isn't being set
at boot time.  I had this problem once and, if I remember correctly, talk
froze at the point yours is but ytalk just returned the error I mentioned.
Is your hostname displayed at your prompt?  If not and you haven't changed
the prompt in .bash_profile, your hostname isn't set.

Also check netstat -a and see if there is a line like the following:

udp        0      0 *:ntalk                 *:*
udp        0      0 *:talk                  *:*

If not then the daemons aren't running.

--Rick

rickya@siservices.net


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