Speak Freely for Unix: sflwld
by John Walker
SFLWLD(1) USER COMMANDS SFLWLD(1)
NAME
sflwld - Speak Freely Look Who's Listening server
SYNOPSIS
sflwld [ -duv ] [ -fserver,... ] [ -hpath ] [ -iinterval ]
[ -mmsgfile ] [ -pport ] [ -zpath ]
DESCRIPTION
sflwld is a server daemon which maintains a list of users
running Speak Freely who identify themselves to the site
running the server. sflwld responds to requests and sup-
plies contact information to allow users to find one
another's Internet addresses. sflwld allows users to find
one another and establish Speak Freely conversations even if
one or both have dial-up Internet connections where the host
name and Internet address vary from session to session.
Servers can forward information to one another, allowing a
user who queries one server in a mutually-forwarding group
to find users connected to any server in the group.
OPTIONS
-d Enables debug output.
-fserver,...
Information received from users directly connected
to this server will be forwarded to all servers
listed. Server names can be either numeric IP ad-
dresses or host names, and may specify a port
number appended to the server address or name,
separated by a colon. Multiple servers can be
specified, separated by commas, up to a maximum of
5.
-hpath An HTML file is written to the given path name (a
fully qualified file name, less the .html suffix),
listing all users currently registered with this
server. Publishing this HTML file as a World-Wide
Web document on the server allows easy access to a
list of all active users who have sent their in-
formation there.
-iinterval
The HTML files written by the -h and -z options
will be updated every interval seconds if a change
has occurred during that period. If interval is
set to zero, the files are updated at the moment
of any change.
-mmsgfile The contents of the text file msgfile are loaded
and used as the ``server welcome message''. This
message usually identifies the server and points
to the HTML file containing the list of active
sites.
-pport Causes sflwld to listen on the specified port
number instead of the default port specified by
``INTERNET_PORT''+2 in the Makefile. Specifying a
nonstandard port number will cause Speak Freely
clients that haven't been similarly reconfigured
to fail to contact the server; the main reason for
using a nonstandard port number is to permit test-
ing an experimental server on a machine which is
running a production server.
-u Prints how-to-call information.
-v Causes sflwld to log all connections, disconnec-
tions, and timeouts to standard output.
-zpath An HTML file is written to the given path name (a
fully qualified file name, less the .html suffix),
listing all users currently registered with this
server, regardless of whether they requested pub-
lic disclosure of their identity by wildcard match
or not. This option allows the system administra-
tor to see all users communicating with the server
without making this information publicly avail-
able. There's nothing to prevent a rogue site
manager from publishing the complete user list,
but since a user can easily determine whether a
request for "exact match only" has been complied
with, circumspect users will shun sites which ig-
nore their request for discretion.
FILES
The -h and -z options create HTML files with the given base
name and an extension of .new, then swap the new files for
any previously-existing files with an extension of .html.
The file update process avoids the risk of transferring a
file in the process of being written.
BUGS
The number of matching items returned is limited to what
will fit in a single 512 byte packet. This is deliberate;
users who wish to browse active sites should consult the
HTML file published with the -h option rather than tie up
the server running sflwld with individual wild-card re-
quests.
SEE ALSO
sflwl(1), sfmike(1), sfspeaker(1)
by John Walker
April 25, 1996