)
)> I have been using 'talk' a bit lately and I find that every now and
)> then it refuses to connect, giving the message:
)>
)> Checking for invitation on caller's machine.
)
)I have found that when it is refusing to connect there are usually a TON of
)extra talk daemons floating around. Killing these daemons as root seems to
)fix the problem. What I want to know is who is creating all these spurious
)daemons.
The info in /etc/utmp is screwed up before 3.1.7. You can get a program to
clean it up (run it out of cron every 5 or so minutes) from IBM.
This bad user info causes a number of problems.
Finger can show idle times of 65 days.
Biff can tell the wrong person mail has arived (it uses /etc/utmp to find
the tty a user is on and writes the notification there).
We have turned biff off untill we go to AIX 3.2. We are at 3.1.6 and do not
want to deal with 2007 and then the 3.2 upgrade also.
Xbiff is unaffected.
Talk can also send the connection requested message to the wrong user.
I received one of these. What cannot happen it to complete the connection.
Attemps to reply only send a new request to the other person. The originating
talk knows who it is looking for and will not fooled. The sender may get
confused as they are waiting for user1 to answer their call and then they get
a connection requested message from user2.
"Who" can show people on who have already logged off.
I assume this bad info causes confusion and all the talk daemons get started.
The cleanup program from IBM will not completely fix this. It just lessens
your chances by keeping the amount of bogus data low.
Rudi
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