Subject: Can't connect server!

From: "Eric S. Hutchison" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 01:13:52 -0600 (CST)

I was trying the"talk"command to reach my sister so I could talk to
her, but the system said that her server was unknown. How could that be
when I am able to send her e-mail all the time? Please tell me why it is
doing this and give me some suggestions,if you could,about how to make
contact so that I can talk to her in a telnet session.Thanks!!!!!

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From: [email-masked] (Orjan Johansen)
Date: 20 Mar 1997 22:01:04 GMT

[Posted and mailed]

In article <[email-masked]>,
Eric S. Hutchison <[email-masked]> wrote:
>her, but the system said that her server was unknown.

The Internet system for addressing mail allows for something called 
mail exchange records. For example, there is no machine called 
washington.edu, but there is an MX record for washington.edu which 
says that mail to there is to be sent via the machine 
mx1.cac.washington.edu or mx2.cac.washington.edu.

This is necessary for sites that want to be able to receive mail 
through more than one machine, but it is used in other cases as well.

What you need to do is to find the address of the machine which your 
sister is actually logged into. It may be the same as the mail 
machine, but if it is a large site with a dedicated mail server, then 
that is unlikely. I suggest you send her mail and ask.

There are two Unix programs, nslookup and host, that can be used to 
find out information about the names of machines and various records.  
host is the one I find the most friendly to use. For example, to get a 
list of the mail machines for washington.edu I used the command

host -t mx washington.edu

host washington.edu would tell what machine has that as its real name 
(in this case, none)

Disclaimer: There are many things that can go wrong and it might be 
that your problem is something else entirely. You might try to have 
your sister use "talk" to reach you instead, then if she gets contact, 
the correct command to reply with should be shown.

At some sites, you can use "finger" to find out what machine someone 
is logged into. You have to first find out which machine accepts 
finger requests, of course.

Greetings,
Ørjan.