TALK Daemon questions

[Edward Vielmetti]

In article <12052 at chaph.usc.edu> szeto at aludra.usc.edu (Johnny Szeto) writes:

   I have an interesting conversation with one of my friends in Canada.
   BTW, we were conversing over the 'talk' command on unix.  But somehow
   I think there are some problems associated with the process.

Sounds like you need to get and install the "4.3" version of talk, also
known as "ntalkd", on one or both of the systems.  It is available from
uunet.uu.net in the /bsd-sources directory.

   My questions are:
   why do these kinds of things happen?

Byte ordering problems are the culprit here.  The protocol for in.talkd
on 4.2-based systems is architecture dependent and cannot be relied to
work between machines of different vendors.

--Ed

Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv at math.lsa.umich.edu>
moderator, comp.archives