ntalkd(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

NTALKD(8)               NetBSD System Manager's Manual               NTALKD(8)


NAME

     ntalkd, talkd -- remote user communication server


SYNOPSIS

     ntalkd [-dl]


DESCRIPTION

     ntalkd is the server that notifies a user that someone else wants to ini-
     tiate a conversation.  It acts as a repository of invitations, responding
     to requests by clients wishing to rendezvous to hold a conversation.

     In normal operation, a client, the caller, initiates a rendezvous by
     sending a CTL_MSG to the server of type LOOK_UP (see
     <protocols/talkd.h>).  This causes the server to search its invitation
     tables to check if an invitation currently exists for the caller (to
     speak to the callee specified in the message).  If the lookup fails, the
     caller then sends an ANNOUNCE message causing the server to broadcast an
     announcement on the callee's login ports requesting contact.

     When the callee responds, the local server uses the recorded invitation
     to respond with the appropriate rendezvous address and the caller and
     callee client programs establish a stream connection through which the
     conversation takes place.


OPTIONS

     ntalkd supports the following options:

     -d     The -d option turns on debugging logging.

     -l     The -l option turns on accounting logging for ntalkd via the
            syslogd(8) service.


FILES

     /usr/libexec/ntalkd


SEE ALSO

     talk(1), write(1), syslog(3), syslogd(8)


HISTORY

     The ntalkd command appeared in 4.3BSD.

     The original talkd program was coded improperly, in a machine and byte-
     order dependent fashion.  When this was corrected, it required a protocol
     change, which necessitated a different daemon to handle it, thus ntalkd
     or "new" talk daemon.  The old daemon has long since been removed, but
     the detritus remain.

NetBSD 9.0                      March 23, 2004                      NetBSD 9.0