Utilities are a simple way to extend the functionality of Licq. A utility is simply a short text file (see the UTILITIES.HOWTO) which defines an external program to run, and what variables to pass it. The utility can be run for any user, so for example the Pine utility will start up a terminal running pine and open a new message with the email address of the particular user in the "To:" field.
Installing a utility is simple. Simply copy the .utility file into {licq prefix}/share/licq/utilities and restart licq.
A number of utilities are available for Licq at the current time (new submissions are welcome):
| utility | description |
| hostname | performs a hostname lookup on the user's ip |
| pine | email the user using pine |
| ping | pings the user's ip |
| finger | finger the remote user |
| netscape | shows the user's homepage in netscape (uses "viewurl-netscape.sh") |
| talk | sends a talk request to the user |
| ftp | ftp's to the user's system using unix ftp |
| queso | uses queso to try to determine the user's operating system |
| nmap | uses nmap to scan for open ports |
| vnc | opens a vnc viewer of the remote user's window |
| traceroute | traces the ip route to the user |
| xtraceroute | a graphical traceroute program. shows the packets route in a 3d map of the planet. needs opengl (or mesa). way cool. 8) (http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3august/xt/) |
| mutt | uses mutt to email the user |
| gftp | a cute, graphical ftp client. (http://gftp.seul.org) |
| backorifice | opens a backorifice connection to the user (http://cvs.linux.hr/boclient/). |