talkd(1M)

DESCRIPTION

Talkd is the server that notifies a user that someone wants to initiate a conversation. It acts as a repository of invitations, responding to requests by clients wishing to initiate a conversation.

To initiate a conversation, the client (the talk command) sends a message of type LOOK_UP to the server (see /usr/include/protocols/talkd.h). This causes the server to search its invitation table to check if an invitation currently exists for the caller to talk to the callee specified in the message. If the lookup fails, the caller then sends a message of type ANNOUNCE, which causes the server to display an announcement on the callee's terminal 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.

To activate the talk service, the following entry must be added to the /etc/inetd.conf file:

SEE ALSO

talk(1), write(1).