SFLWLD(1)

NAME
sflwld - Speak Freely Look Who's Listening server

SYNOPSIS
sflwld [ -duv ]
[ -fserver,... ] [ -hpath ] [ -iinterval ] [ -mmsgfile ] [ -pport ] [ -rinterval ] [ -zpath ]

DESCRIPTION
sflwld is a server daemon which maintains a list of users running Speak Freely who identify themselves to the site running the server. sflwld responds to requests and supplies contact information to allow users to find one another's Internet addresses. sflwld allows users to find one another and establish Speak Freely conversations even if one or both have dial-up Internet connections where the host name and Internet address vary from session to session. Servers can forward information to one another, allowing a user who queries one server in a mutually-forwarding group to find users connected to any server in the group.

OPTIONS

-d  Enables debug output.

-fserver,...
    Information received from users directly connected to this server will be forwarded to all servers listed. Server names can be either numeric IP addresses or host names, and may specify a port number appended to the server address or name, separated by a colon. Multiple servers can be specified, separated by commas, up to a maximum of 5.

-hpath
    An HTML file is written to the given path name (a fully qualified file name, less the .html suffix), listing all users currently registered with this server. Publishing this HTML file as a World-Wide Web document on the server allows easy access to a list of all active users who have sent their information there.

-iinterval
    The HTML files written by the -h and -z options will be updated every interval seconds if a change has occurred during that period. If interval is set to zero, the files are updated at the moment of any change.

-mmsgfile
    The contents of the text file msgfile are loaded and used as the ``server welcome message''. This message usually identifies the server and points to the HTML file containing the list of active sites.

-pport
    Causes sflwld to listen on the specified port number instead of the default port specified by ``INTERNET_PORT''+2 in the Makefile. Specifying a nonstandard port number will cause Speak Freely clients that haven't been similarly reconfigured to fail to contact the server; the main reason for using a nonstandard port number is to permit testing an experimental server on a machine which is running a production server.

-rinterval
    The HTML written by the -h and -z options will contain a client-pull request which causes the user's Web browser (if it supports client-pull) to automatically refresh the document every interval seconds. If no -r option is specified or interval is set to 0, no client-pull updating will occur. Note the distinction between the -i and -r options; -i specifies how frequently sflwld updates the HTML file on the server, while the -r option determines the interval between automatic downloads of this file to users displaying it in their Web browsers. It doesn't make sense to set the -r option to a shorter interval than the -i option, but to reduce network traffic it may be eminently reasonable to update the HTML file every 30 seconds or so, but only have users refresh their browser display every two to five minutes.

-u  Prints how-to-call information.

-v  Causes sflwld to log all connections, disconnections, and timeouts to standard output.

-zpath
    An HTML file is written to the given path name (a fully qualified file name, less the .html suffix), listing all users currently registered with this server, regardless of whether they requested public disclosure of their identity by wildcard match or not. This option allows the system administrator to see all users communicating with the server without making this information publicly available. There's nothing to prevent a rogue site manager from publishing the complete user list, but since a user can easily determine whether a request for "exact match only" has been complied with, circumspect users will shun sites which ignore their request for discretion.

FILES
The -h and -z options create HTML files with the given base name and an extension of .new, then swap the new files for any previously-existing files with an extension of .html. The file update process avoids the risk of transferring a file in the process of being written.

BUGS
The number of matching items returned is limited to what will fit in a single 512 byte packet. This is deliberate; users who wish to browse active sites should consult the HTML file published with the -h option rather than tie up the server running sflwld with individual wild-card requests.

SEE ALSO
sflwl(1), sfmike(1), sfspeaker(1)

AUTHOR
    John Walker
    WWW:    http://www.fourmilab.ch/

This program is in the public domain.