davis@scrsu1.sdr.slb.com (Paul Davis) (04/27/89)
Hi,
I'm trying to write a new version of comsat(8) (rcomsat) for use in a
networked environment. The (trivial) mailbox summariser is complete, and
I've been trying to figure out how to do the one key thing that comsat(8)
does not: listen on the datagram port associated with biff(1) (normally
512) ON A REMOTE HOST.
Now it seemed to me that this is what Internet domain sockets were all
about: I should be able to open a socket to the remote host etc. etc. etc.
However, all the examples I can find assume that the connection to the
remote host is done by the client process, whilst the `server' runs on its
own host. What we have here is rather the other way around:
- /bin/mail writes to the biff datagram port on its own host (client)
- rcomsat will listen on the biff datagram port on a remote host
(server)
Moreover, all the documentation I've seen specifies that the listen() and
connect() calls work only on a socket of type SOCK_STREAM. So -
1) Has anyone done this already ?
2) If not, then can anyone indicate the rough outline of what I
need to do to get a `server' to listen on a datagram
port of a remote machine ?
3) does anyone think that this is a ridiculous idea ?
your wisdom and comments are appreciated (and necessary :-)
Paul
Paul Davis at Schlumberger Cambridge Research
<davis%scrsu1%sdr.slb.com@relay.cs.net>
[[ You can only bind to a port that is on your local machine. It doesn't
matter whether you are client or server. Every connection that a program
deals with has a local end and a remote end. The local end MUST be the
local host. --wnl ]]