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4.3.9 General Settings

Settings described in this subsection configure the basic behavior of the DICT daemon.

Configuration: initial-banner-text string ¶

Display the string in the textual part of the initial server reply.

When connection is established, the server sends an initial reply to the client, that looks like in the example below:

220 example.org <auth.mime> <520.1212912026@example.org>

See Initial Reply, for a detailed description of its parts.

The part of this reply after the host name is modifiable and can contain arbitrary text. You can use initial-banner-text to append any additional information there. Note, that string may not contain newlines or angle brackets. For example:

initial-banner-text "Please authenticate yourself,";

This statement produces the following initial reply (split over two lines for readability):

220 example.org Please authenticate yourself,
  <auth.mime> <520.1212912026@Texample.org>

Configuration: hostname string ¶

Sets the hostname. By default, the server determines it automatically. If, however, it makes a wrong guess, you can fix it using this directive.

The server hostname is used, among others, in the initial reply after ‘220’ code (see above) and may also be displayed in the access log file using the ‘%v’ escape (see Access Log).

Configuration: server-info string ¶

Sets the server description to be shown in reply to SHOW SERVER (see SHOW SERVER) command.

The first line of the reply, after the usual ‘114’ response line, shows the name of host where the server is running. If the settings of show-sys-info (see show-sys-info) permit, some additional information about the system is printed.

The lines that follow are taken from the server-info directive. It is common to specify string using “here-document” syntax (see here-document), e.g.:

server-info <<EOT
Welcome to the FOO dictionary service.

Contact <dict@foo.example.org> if you have questions or
suggestions.
EOT;

Configuration: help-text string ¶

Sets the text to be displayed in reply to the HELP command.

The default reply to HELP command displays a list of commands understood by the server with a short description of each.

If the string begins with a plus sign, it will be appended to the default reply:

help-text <<-EOT
  +
  The commands beginning with an X are extensions.
EOT;

If the string begins with any other character, except ‘+’, it will replace the default help output. For example:

help-text <<-EOT
  There is no help.
  See RFC 2229 for detailed information.
EOT;

Configuration: default-strategy string ¶

Sets the name of the default matching strategy (see The MATCH Command). By default, Levenshtein matching is used, which is equivalent to

default-strategy lev;