From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 27 13:32:06 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA22687 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 27 Jun 1996 13:32:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from twwells.com (twwells.com [199.79.159.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA22630 for ; Thu, 27 Jun 1996 13:31:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: by twwells.com (Smail3.1.29.1 #8) id m0uZNjC-00018xC; Thu, 27 Jun 96 16:31 EDT To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) Subject: Re: a talkd/write improvement I made Date: 27 Jun 1996 16:31:47 -0400 Lines: 36 Message-ID: <4qur3j$qr0@twwells.com> References: <4qtdi8$gjd@twwells.com> <199606271226.MAA00863@jraynard.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.twwells.com Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In article <199606271226.MAA00863@jraynard.demon.co.uk>, James Raynard wrote: : > This means: allow steph@cyberenet.net to "talk"; forbid everyone : > else on that machine. Allow anyone at admin.cyberenet.net to talk; : > forbid everyone else. (It's using fnmatch(3).) : Sounds useful. It is. I'm the head admin for an ISP and people are constantly annoying me about trivia. It goes from annoying to fingernail- on-blackboard when trivia is transmitted at the half-finger typing speed of most people. So I normally want talk off. But there are people who have legitimate need to talk to me and who can type fast enough to make it worthwhile, so sometimes I turn it on....and then get more annoying talks. I've been wanting a way to allow selective talks for a long time and when, last night, I decided I needed a programming break, as in "I'm a programmer, dammit, and I'd like to write the occasional program!", I decided to do it as a short project. : > This is all well and good, except that the write program can also : > be an annoyance. So I modified it, too. But there's a problem. : > While talkd runs as root and so can see anyone's .talkrc, write : > runs as the invoking user and if that user can't see the callee's : > .talkrc, write reverts to the default behavior, which is to allow : > the write. : : How about *not* allowing the write if .talkrc exists but is : unreadable? That way, I can make my .talkrc readable by a group that : represents, for example, people working on the same project, and use : it to filter them more selectively, while shutting everyone else out. That doesn't resolve the problem. The usual problem is people protecting their home directories. Then, I can't tell if they have a .talkrc. Also, your suggestion isn't going to do much for talkd....