University of California at Berkeley
           Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences
                   Instructional & Electronics Support Group

/share/b/pub/talk.help

							       Aug 22, 1998


Error messages and probable solutions:
-------------------------------------

"Checking for invitation on  caller's  machine"  

	This message may occur when the user's machine is overloaded with
	network services; one solution is to start a second "inetd" daemon 
	on that machine.

	This may also occur when the recipient's machine is running an old
	version of talk.  Some newer releases of the talk program are 
	incompatible with older versions of talk. If somebody tries to 
	"talk" to you using the old talk program, you may be instructed
	to respond with /usr/old/talk.   

	If you initiate a "talk" to somebody on a machine that does not have 
	the new  talk program, the "talk" program will wait forever with the 
	message 
		"Checking for invitation on  caller's  machine"  
	instead  of saying  
		"Waiting  for  your party to respond". 

	In such cases you should try your request again using /usr/old/talk.
	Note:  On some systems, the older version of talk may be available as
	/usr/ucb/otalk.


"You don't exist. Go away."

	This alarming message occurs occasionally on our older DEC machines,
	due to a bug.  The user is not logged to a file that is used by
	'talk', and 'talk' cannot identify the user.  The simplest cure is to
	log out and login again.  We trust that the bug will be fixed some
	day!


                   		Instructional & Electronics Support Group
				384/386 Cory Hall, 333 Soda Hall