Enable the command-line talk program

Jul 17, '02 02:06:51AM

Contributed by: mici

You can let other users connected to your machine via SSH chat with you and each other using the Terminal. This gives you convenience of real time dialog over a highly secure connection (and faster then various flooded chat networks).

It can be done via talk,a program installed under BSD but disabled by default. All you need is to change the inetd configuration database file:

 % sudo pico /etc/inetd.conf
Uncomment the "ntalk" line:
 ntalk dgram udp wait root /usr/libexec/tcpd ntalkd
After rebooting, to chat with a user connected to the same machine, just type:
 % talk [username]
Refer to the very easy talk manual ("man talk") to find out more details. Hope this helps...

[Editor's note: I thought I had read about various security holes in the "ntalk" server, and that's why it was disabled by default -- does anyone have more information on this subject?]

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