Ident- Enabling Server ident for IRC

How To Enable Your Server Ident (Getting ident'd or loosing the ~ (tidle) bit in front of your nick in irc.) by: Kez kezz@webzone.net.au

OK , indenting under linux is not the same as it is for windows. Windows doesn't come with a dedicated indent daemon/server. Most distributions of linux do (to the best of my knowledge anyway). Indenting is only a small thing, but some IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers wont allow you to connect unless it's working. IRC servers are not necessarily the only servers that require server ident to allow a connection. Things that you will need to have for this project:

1) A hammer for when all else fails. 2) Patients (not the medical type either). 3) A basic understanding of life in general. 4) Knowing how to use a text editor and the text editor. 6) Knowing what bash is and how to enter commands. 7) The inetd.conf file under the etc directory. 8) Have in.identd installed in the proper place. 9) Root access is required.

I will do my best to help you understand my composition, just consider yourself lucky this is not hand written. Now you might want to have a read of the man page about in.identd. In that man page there is a lot of stuff explaining all about what in.dentd does and what the various flags do.

Ready to start modifications: The file /etc/inetd.conf has to be modified a little. Go ahead and open this file in a text editor (such as the vi editor) and page down to the bottom (its the second to last entry for me). You should see a line similar or possibly exactly the same as the following:

auth   stream  tcp     nowait   nobody    /usr/sbin/in.identd in.identd -l -e -o  

Now remark out the line by placing a pound sign '#' in front of the line. Then copy the entire line and paste it directly below the original. It is a good idea to always preserve the original line in the event that something go amiss and you wish to restore it. I also recommend documenting your changes, you can type any comments after the '#' sign on any line. Modify the un-commented line to read as follows:

auth   stream  tcp     nowait   nobody    /usr/sbin/in.identd in.identd -i -l 

OK the above is what I ended up with, but a more proper way would be to have:

auth   stream  tcp     nowait   nobody    /usr/sbin/in.identd in.identd -w -t<120>

You could add the -I flag which is to enable logging. Either of these lines should enable ident server to function and satisfy any IRC server that requires ident enabled. Below are some of the relevant explanations of the flags I have touched upon, taken straight from the man page for in.identd. It is best to read the whole man page to get a proper grasp on it.

	The  -w  flag should be used when starting the daemon from
	       inetd with the "wait" option in the /etc/inetd.conf file .
	       This  is  the  preferred  mode of operation since that will
	       start a copy of identd at the first connection request and
	       then identd will handle subsequent requests without having
	       to do the nlist  lookup  in  the  kernel  file  for  every
	       request  as  in  the -i mode above. The identd daemon will
	       run either forever, until a bug makes it crash or a  time-
	       out, as specified by the -t flag, occurs.
	
	The  -t  option  is  used  to specify the timeout
	       limit. This is the number of seconds a server started with
	       the -w flag will wait for new connections before terminat-
	       ing. The server is automatically restarted by inetd  when-
	       ever a new connection is requested if it has terminated. A
	       suitable value for this is 120 (2 minutes),  if  used.  It
	       defaults to no timeout (i.e. will wait forever, or until a
	       fatal condition occurs in the server). 
	
	The  -i  flag,  which  is the default mode, should be used
	       when starting the daemon  from  inetd  with  the  "nowait"
	       option  in the /etc/inetd.conf file. Use of this mode will
	       make inetd start one identd  daemon  for  each  connection
	       request.   
	
	The  -e flag tells identd to always return "UNKNOWN-ERROR"
	       instead of the "NO-USER" or "INVALID-PORT" errors.
	
	The  -o flag tells identd to not reveal the operating sys-
	       tem type it  is  run  on  and  to  instead  always  return
	       "OTHER".
	
	The -l flag tells identd to use the System logging  daemon
	        syslogd for logging purposes.  

This information provided by Kezz (kezz@webzone.net.au) icq uin: 59460792 Or if your ambitious enough you may find Kez on the oz.org IRC net. Generally, Kez is sitting in channels/rooms #Adelaide, #abuse-channel, #wolf, and #linux.

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