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ident2 - An advanced ident daemon

ident2(8) System Manager's Manual ident2(8)


ident2 - An advanced ident daemon


ident2 [options]


ident2 is an advanced ident daemon, which can run as an inetd service or on it's own. It has various features such as user defined and random replies, extensive logging, and full administrative control.


The program follows the usual GNU syntax command-line unless it is unsupported on your system. GNU options begin with two dashes(`-') and have much more descriptive names.
-h, --help
Show summary of options.
-u, --usage
Shows example command lines
-v, --version
Show version information
-l, --license
Show licensing information
-a, --force-inetd
Force inetd mode, if autodetection isn't working.
-d, --force-daemon
Force standalone daemon, if autodetection isn't working.
-i, --use-user-ident
Allow user defined ident replies. Just do a echo 'ident ar' > ~/.ident to change your ident reply.
-y, --user-reply-file
File ident2 should look for in user's homedir for replies. Default is ~/.ident
-n, --allow-noident-file
Disable replies for user if user has a ~/.noident file. This behavior is disabled by default.
-o, --client-timeout
Clients timeout after this many seconds
-s, --dont-change-uid
Ident2 will normally try to change it's uid to something less privileged if it finds it's uid to be 0. This option disables this behavior altogether.
-r, --always-random
Always send a random reply, regardless of what kind of request the client made. This is useful for abusing the ident protocol as well as assisting outgoing IP masqueraded connections.
-m, --daemon-maxclients
Daemon-only: Accept no more than this many connections at a time.
-p, --daemon-port
Daemon-only: Bind this port, instead of 'auth' aka 113


inetd(8), inetd.conf(5)


This manual page was written by Alexander Reelsen <>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).
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