"Leopold Toetsch" <lt@toetsch.at> wrote:

...

No. None of the usual services depends on the ident daemon.

This is not totally correct. I had port 113 disabled (&logged) a long time. I got denys during FTP transfers nethertheless FTP worked. But there are some FTP-Servers, which need the port open, else no connection will be made.

I agree, a server can be implemented that way. (I saw this with the finger service on some hosts, too.) But this is not part of any standard (FTP, HTTP, ...) and will exclude *many* clients. You will hardly find an identd on non-UNIX platforms, and even many UNIX/Linux hosts are run with identd disabled. Therefore, IMHO in general it's a very bad idea to implement such a "feature". (Maybe there are exceptions in some very special cases.) Eilert -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eilert Brinkmann -- Universitaet Bremen -- FB 3, Informatik eilert@informatik.uni-bremen.de - eilert@tzi.org - eilert@linuxfreak.com http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~eilert/