Enabling talkd (Console Chat) between logged in
users on FreeBSD and other BSDs
Those who are in familiar with older UNIXes, UNIX BSD derivatives
and GNU Linux should certainly remember the times, when we hackers
used to talk to each other using
talk service.
Those who don't know what
talk command is it is a simple
console / ssh
utility to talk to another logged in
users.
Talk is very similar to
write and
mesg one
liner messasing utilities available for *nixes, the difference is
it is intendted to provide interactive chat between the two logged
in users. People who came to know UNIX or free software in older
times most likely don't know talk, however I still remember how
precious this tool was for communication back in the day.
I believe still it can be useful so I dediced to install ot on one
FreeBSD host.
In order to have the talk service running on BSD it is necessery to
have
/usr/libexec/ntalkd installed on the system this
however is installed by default with standard BSD OS installs, so
no need for any external ports install to run it.
talk doesn't have it's own init script to start is not written to
run as it own service but in order to run it is is necessery to
enable it via
inetd
Enabling it is done by;;;
1 -- Editting /etc/inetd.conf
Inside the conf the line::
#ntalk dgram udp wait tty:tty /usr/libexec/ntalkd
ntalkd
should be uncommented e.g, become ;;;
ntalk dgram udp wait tty:tty /usr/libexec/ntalkd
ntalkd
2 -- Restart inetd
freebsd# /etc/rc.d/inetd restart
Stopping inetd.
Starting inetd.
talk is planned to be used for
peer to peer conversations
over SSH so in a way it is the GRANDFATHER
of IRC, ICQ
and Skype;;;
Here is an example on how talk is used ,, Let's say there are three
logged in users
pcfreak# w
12:39PM up 3 days, 16:25, 3 users, load averages: 1.12, 0.91,
0.71
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT
testuser p0 192.168.0.7 10:50AM - bash
hipo p3 192.168.0.8 12:23PM - w
root p4 :ttyp2:S.0 12:24PM - vim
/usr/local/www/dat
I'm logged in with my username
hipo and I would like to talk
to
testuser ;;;;
pcfreak% tty
/dev/ttyp3
You see I'm logged in on
/dev/ttyp3 (this is the specific
naming on BSDs) on Linux equivalent is
/dev/tty3 So to talk
the other user
testuser;;;;;-
$ talk testuser ttyp0
[No connection yet]
[Waiting for your party to respond]
The
testuser logged in via SSH will then get a message
||;
Message from Talk_Daemon@pcfreak at 12:44 on 2012/06/10
...
talk: connection requested by hipo@localhost
talk: respond with: talk hipo@localhost
To enter a talk session then the logged in
testuser has to
type:
$ talk hipo@localhost