How Do I Enable IdentD?

I already did that. It's not a permissions problem, and has been experienced by many others.

Thanks though, what you said makes sense.

I have NO Firewall enabled. The computer I use for IRC has DMZ enabled in my router. No ports are "filtered". I have properly UNinstalled and reinstalled IdentD 2.0 and 2.5.1.

I have Googled this topic intensively. The only guyz that seem to be able to fix it are Unix/Terminal experts, and they never seem to give pricise instructions. They just send you to Terminal manual pages. for eg:

Am I missing something? It seemed like all he wanted to know is how to enable identd.
If so:

# The following are not known to be useful, and should not be enabled unless
# you have a specific need for it and are aware of the possible implemications.
#
#exec stream tcp nowait root /usr/libexec/tcpd rexecd
auth stream tcp wait root /usr/libexec/tcpd identd -w -t120

Change "ident" (the first word of the last line) to "auth" and you're good to go.


OR:

The problem is in a file called inetd.conf. Here's how you fix it, as described by Mike Vannorsdel in the forum thread:

Open a terminal session, and edit /etc/inetd.conf. Change the last line from

#ident stream tcp wait root /usr/libexec/tcpd identd -w -t120

to

auth stream tcp wait root /usr/libexec/tcpd identd -w -t120

Save the changes and reboot.



I am NOT the only one having this problem. There was a post by someone else with the same problem in the Leopard forum.

So, what I'm asking: could somebody check the above, and explain to a person like myself that bought his first Mac to do WORK, and to AVOID the command-line interface, how to enable identd.

Let me restate the problem in greater detail:

I try to connect to an IRC server, here is the response:

Looking up IP number for newyork.ny.us.undernet.org
Connection with newyork.ny.us.undernet.org (49218) established
* Looking up your hostname
* Checking Ident
* No ident response
PING 1121185099
* Couldn't look up your hostname
* Ident broken or disabled

So I KNOW it's NOT working when I need it.

I've tried TWO different programs to get it working, and both have failed.

It works transparently without any problem when running OS 9.

I bought my first Mac (IIx) with 2 megs of ram and a 120 meg hard drive over 20 years ago, and it worked on THAT computer, and on every Mac since then INCLUDING the G4 MDD if it is booted into OS 9.

I can't get it to work on OS X.

Here are the results of your suggestion, which I don't understand at all:

mac-aldentes-power-mac-g4:~ macarone$ ps aux |grep ident
macarone 506 0.0 -0.0 18052 240 p1 R+ 2:20AM 0:00.00 grep ident
mac-aldentes-power-mac-g4:~ macarone$


mac-aldentes-power-mac-g4:~ macarone$ netstat -an -f inet |grep LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.1220 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.49156 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.80 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.8001 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.8000 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.7070 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.554 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.113 . LISTEN
tcp46 0 0 *.113 . LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 *.515 . LISTEN
mac-aldentes-power-mac-g4:~ macarone$


I've already reported that inspite of 20 years Mac experience, I was not able to make head or tail of the instructions from Unix experts on other forums. That's why I posted here, after first checking and finding that others have reported the same problem in the Leopard forum, and no solution was posted.

If, the information I posted here is useful, has anybody gotten it to work successfully? If so, please post STEP by STEP instructions, for eg:

1) Open Terminal and type:

pseudo gripes: enable: \off

2) Terminal should reply:

accepted

3) if instead it replies:

permission unavailable

4) type:

major /gripe .repeat


Now, I hope that at least the QUESTION is clear.

Thanks in advance to the kind soul that can help. I KNOW there are others that will be helped by this. And I DO know that Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger work without identd. I prefer to use IRC.

GRC seems to be, understandably, very Windows oriented. There testing software downloads are all for Windows only.

I did use their on line port test, and found that these are the ports that are blocked:

133, 136-139, 445 & 593.

Port 113 looks normal.

It also reported (which they said was BAD) that my computer responded to their "ping"

Ok, so your ident/auth daemon is running

No, it is NOT running. It exists, but does NOT report my identd.

Is it a console/terminal-based client

I already admitted I was very uncomfortable using Terminal. I normally use ircle, I've tried Snak and Linkinus with similar results. Collquy does not work on my set up at all.

Ident/auth is an archaic, outdated protocol that's always been a PITA,

It may be a PITA to those trying to flood, run unauthorized bots etc. IRC and identd are almost as old as the internet. I'm trying to conform to current standards NOT to evade them. I'm trying to REVEAL my identity, not to hide it.

May we please get back on topic:

How Do I Enable IdentD? (By default is NOT AVAILABLE in Tiger)


When you log in to IRC, for eg. do you get:

* Processing connection to irc.xxxx.net
* Looking up your hostname...
* Checking Ident
* Found your hostname
* Got Ident response

Does your username appear WITHOUT a tilde (~) in front of it?

username@xxxxxxx OR is it: ~username@xxxxxxxx


If you cannot answer YES to BOTH of the above questions, you do NOT have identd enabled.


If you DO have identd enabled, you MUST have done something SPECIFIC, and I'm sure that ALL of the MANY people that have read this thread would appreciate clear, step by step instructions for NON-Unix-Terminal-Command line experts.

What is wanted is help from somebody that has done this successfully on OS X.4.11.

UPDATE

There have now been over 500 viewings of this topic. Even if this number represents only 100 people, each viewing 5 times to see replies, that still indicates serious interest.

I went into a Mac help chat channel with over 100 users logged in. Only a handful had identd running (NO tilde). I "versioned" these few, prior to messaging them for help, and EACH was using mIRC (meaning they were on Windows) OR they were using irssi or another Unix client. Rather a small sampling, but I couldn't find a SINGLE OS X user with identd.

This is just further proof that it IS a Mac OS X problem.

Is there really no solution?