Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ogicse!hsdndev!cmcl2!panix!alexis
From: alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: talk not working
Keywords: talk
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.055731.27895@panix.uucp>
Date: 24 Apr 91 05:57:31 GMT
References: <1991Apr23.044356.15079@deadzone.uucp>
Organization: PANIX - Public Access Unix Systems of NY
Lines: 38

marcelo@deadzone.uucp (Marcelo Gallardo) writes:
>	I've got a problem that seems to have popped up after moving to
>	2.0.1. When I try to "talk" to anyone connected to my machine,
>	talk gives me a strange error message...
>
>	[deadzone]/usr/users/marcelo % talk root
>	This machine doesn't exist. Boy, am I confused!
>
>	I don't have an ethernet card, but I have configured both bnet
>	and nfs. Anyone know why I'm getting this error? To quote a
>	silly error "Boy, am I confused!"

I HATE this crap. Whoever wrote talk was a hacker in the dirty sense of the
word! I struggled with the same thing for months before I finally figured
this one out.

(And if you think that's a bad error message, how about the one that says:
   You don't exist. Go away.
Nice user interface, huh?)

Anyway, the solution is quite simple: Your hostname is not the first name
in the first line in /etc/hosts. Yes, that's right- the one that says something
like:
127.0.0.1	loopback loop lo	# loopback interface

Talk wants your hostname, "deadzone," before any other name. Simply putting
it in as an alias (ie, at the end of the line) does not work (or at least
it didn't used to. I don't trust anything anymore :-( ).

Even if you have SLIP running, you need your hostname in the loopback line.

With a real EtherNet card installed, I don't think any of this matters, but
I haven't tried it.

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis