Identd Setup

The Ident service as specified by RFC 1413 is mostly used by various IRC networks and the occasional old FTP server to ask a remote server which user is making a connection. This method is quite untrustworthy, as the remote host can simply choose to lie.

So you have two choices:

1. Tell the truth (see pidentd below)
2. Tell a little white lie (see nullident below)

pIdentd

Like most people, I prefer to run identd from from inetd instead of as a stand-alone service. For this to work you will need to install two packages: xinetd and pidentd. I tried this with oidentd but it does not seem to work with the latest xinetd.

1. Install xinetd and pidentd.

2. Next, you will need to paste the following into a new file and save it as /etc/xinetd.d/auth

service auth
{
      flags = REUSE
      socket_type = stream
      wait = no
      user = nobody
      server = /usr/bin/identd
      server_args = -m -N
      logonfailure += USERID
      disable = no
}

3. After you have saved the new file, start xinetd systemd service.

If all went well, you should have the auth service running on port 113. A good way of checking this is by installing nmap (if you do not have it already) and typing

$ nmap localhost