I tried to talk to someone on another system it would say [no connection yet], then [Waiting for invitation] and then nothing happens. What should I do?
There are a number of reasons why `talk’ won’t work. First of all, note that the Sun version (ie. on binkley) of talk is usually compatible between themselves, but are usually incompatible with other systems. Next, if in the past talk has worked and now it doesn’t, then that would mean there is a transient network problem, and it may go away soon (thought that could last a few days). Alternatively, someone has changed something on either end; some system configuration files, or operating system, or machine. If the problem lasts more than a few days, you might think of reporting it to the local and remote sysadmin (root@… and help@cs). If you’ve never been able to connect, then it probably means that the remote computer cannot `talk’ to us. This is usually because of some system software that is incompatible. It could be a transient network problem, but those don’t last more than a few days. Not much can be done otherwise. You can run a few tests: telnet to the machine. That will give
