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Date:      Wed, 21 Apr 1999 21:31:33 +0100 (BST)
From:      "Ben J. Cohen" <bjc23@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Usernames and TalkD 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904212116060.1167-100000@bjc23.trin.cam.ac.uk>

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Hi!

I would like to alter talkd so that there is a default user
corresponding to any username which doesn't exist on my machine.  Thus 

talk root
talk bjc23

will work as before, but if ben isn't an entry in /etc/passwd then

talk ben 

will automatically be referred to bjc23 (or root if preferred).
Can this be done?  Would it be easy to do?

-------------

More generally, is it possible to have user ``aliases'' for talkd as
well?  

e.g. 
talk ben   
would always go to bjc23;
talk al 
would always go to ano01, etc.

This could be done by a /etc/talkd.rc file, or a /etc/passwd.aliases file,
or another field in /etc/passwd...  
I don't know how much this would involve changing user programs, but then
the alias feature could be added to other things like login as desired.  
This would be useful for shortcuts (ben is easier to remember than
bjc23) and if you have different usernames on different machines.

Would this be a useful feature, and how hard would it be to implement?

(Note that having users with different usernames but the same UID in
/etc/passwd doesn't solve the talk problem and can cause other problems,
and isn't recommended in the man page;) 

Thanks,

Ben.



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