🚀 go-pugleaf

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 ]]