10.3: Enable identd server for internet relay chat use

Nov 13, '03 10:19:00AM

Contributed by: ChiperSoft

For some reason, Apple decided to not include the identd server in Panther. If you're a regular user of internet relay chat (IRC), this is a severe hindrance, and many IRC servers require that your machine ident before you can log on. Here is one way you can get ident working on Panther.

Download the fakeidentd source code. Open a Terminal and cd into the fakeident source code directory. Then type the following:

 % cc identd.c
 % mv a.out fakeidentd
 % sudo chown root:wheel fakeidentd
 % sudo mv fakeidentd /usr/bin/fakeidentd
Next you need to use your favorite command line text editor to edit the file /etc -> xinetd.d -> auth to look like this:
service auth
{
        disable         = no
        socket_type     = stream
        wait            = no
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/bin/fakeidentd
        groups          = yes
        flags           = REUSE IPv6
}
Save the file and restart xinetd using sudo killall -HUP xinetd. With a bit of luck, you now should have a working identd server which returns the name "nobody." FakeIdentd allows you to define a name to return, but I don't know how to do it from this context.

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