[HECnet] Re: Finger survey

I'm a bit late to the party, but I figured I'd chime in here anyway 8-} I was the maintainer of VMS Finger from V50.1.00 (when I took it over from Rand Hall) until V50.1.35 which was the last release in July 2000. Which Finger you get by default (and what it supports) on VMS depends on which TCP/IP package you have. There's no native DECnet-only Finger. I've started working on VMS Finger again, including back-porting the V50.1.35 back to VAX/VMS - VAX support was essentially frozen at V50.1.29. Idle time on VMS is a bucket full of eels - VMS kept track of idle time on physical terminals. I'm not sure if it still does. It never did it for terminal-like connections. Brian Schenkenberger wrote a loadable execu- table image, loaded at boot time, that provides idle monitoring for TT devices, as well as hooks to add monitoring of other terminal devices. A separate utility hooks into it during normal systartup_vms.com proces- sing to add monitoring to RT devices (since that device didn't exist at boot time). Although it is copyrighted by him, he allows it to be dis- tributed with VMS Finger (and it works on both VAX and Alpha). I never had an Itanium system of my own (and never desire to), so if you have one and want to run Finger on it, drop me an email and I'll send you a test kit once I have VMS Finger closer to release state. Here's an example of VMS Finger (running on a real VAX to a virtual- ized Alpha): VX4200::$ finger @server/idle/version [SERVER.DECnet] OpenVMS Finger: Version V51.1.36 of 23-Aug-2024 Unauthorized Access Strictly Prohibited SERVER DS10 616 MHz, OpenVMS V8.4-2L1, Thu, 12-Sep-2024 21:28, 4 Users, 0 Batch Uptime 19 18:55, since Sat, 24-Aug-2024 02:33, Load: 0.06 0.04 0.07 PID Username Program Term Login CPU Idle Location TT Type 0000AD16 TERRY $ NTY13: 02:55 0:00 1:19 bedroom.glaver.o VT3xx 0000AA2B TERRY Ltpad NTY14: 02:56 0:00 18:30 bedroom.glaver.o VT3xx 00008634 TERRY Ua NTY12: 16:47 0:38 1:19 portable3-wl.gla VT3xx 0000C496 TERRY $ NTY15: 14:00 0:00 2 office.glaver.or VT3xx 0000C497 TERRY Ltpad NTY16: 14:01 0:00 7:26 office.glaver.or VT3xx Some info on that display - by default, if the node being fingered looks like it could be a DECnet Phase IV node, it tries DECnet first. If you specify something that either isn't a known DECnet node or can't possibly be a DECnet node, it uses TCP/IP: VX4200::$ finger @server.glaver.org/idle/version [SERVER.GLAVER.ORG] OpenVMS Finger: Version V51.1.36 of 23-Aug-2024 Unauthorized Access Strictly Prohibited SERVER DS10 616 MHz, OpenVMS V8.4-2L1, Thu, 12-Sep-2024 21:31, 4 Users, 0 Batch Uptime 19 18:57, since Sat, 24-Aug-2024 02:33, Load: 0.07 0.07 0.07 PID Username Program Term Login CPU Idle Location TT Type 0000AD16 TERRY $ NTY13: 02:55 0:00 1:21 bedroom.glaver.o VT3xx 0000AA2B TERRY Ltpad NTY14: 02:56 0:00 18:33 bedroom.glaver.o VT3xx 00008634 TERRY Ua NTY12: 16:47 0:38 1:21 portable3-wl.gla VT3xx 0000C496 TERRY $ NTY15: 14:00 0:00 4 office.glaver.or VT3xx 0000C497 TERRY Ltpad NTY16: 14:01 0:00 7:29 office.glaver.or VT3xx VMS Finger will still try to link code for use with Joiner Associates' JNET (BITNET) networking stack if you ask for it, but it is untested for decades. If anyone is still running JNET and connected to something, drop me an email. I'm only testing as far back as VAX/VMS V7.3 right now. Eventually I'll see how far back I can go. Hopefully VMS V5.5-2 and ideally VMS V4.4. So much for VMS Finger... I'm also the creator of RSTS/E Finger. It is DECnet-only, but can be con- figured to use any DECnet node as a gateway, either to other DECnet areas or to TCP/IP hosts. Here's RSTS/E 10.1 being Fingered from VMS: SERVER::$ finger @pidp11/version [PIDP11.DECnet] RSTS/E Finger: Version V1.2-09 of 06-Sep-2024 RSTS/E Your Organization Name Here PiDP-11 PIDP11 PDP-11/70, RSTS V10.1-L, Friday, 12-Sep-1924 21:33, 9 Jobs, 63 Max. Uptime 4 07:33:52, since Monday, 8-Sep-1924 14:00 05-Sep-24 - Your message could be here! Edit FINGER$:FINGER.MSG to change it. Job Username PPN Progrm Term Login CPU ST Location TTType 1 SYSTEM 1,2 ERRCPY Det 00:00 SR - Detached - 2 SYSTEM 1,2 MAILQ Det 00:01 SR - Detached - 3 SYSTEM 1,2 OMS Det 00:03 SL - Detached - 4 SYSTEM 1,2 PBS... Det 00:06 SL - Detached - 5 SYSTEM 1,2 EVTLOG Det 00:00 SL - Detached - 6 SYSTEM 1,2 MESMAN Det 00:00 SL - Detached - 7 TERRY 20,254 DCL KB33: 14:01 00:00 ^C SERVER::[11,376] VT320 8 TERRY 20,254 DCL KB34: 02:57 00:00 ^C SERVER::[11,376] VT320 9 SYSTEM 1,2 FINSRV Det 00:00 RN - Detached - And here is RSTS/E 10.1 Fingering an Internet host: $ finger @mim.stupi.net [MIM.STUPI.NET via routing host SERVER] [SERVER.DECnet] [MIM.STUPI.NET] RSX-11M-PLUS system MIM. Fri Sep 13 03:39:27 2024. Up: 1 day, 4:44. Luser Real name Term Idle Logged in From BILLQUIST Johnny Billquist TT15: 17 12 Sep 14:53 s-5eeaac7c-74736162 RSTS/E Finger requires RSTS/E V9.6 or later, since the DECnet/E it relies on is V4.1, which itself requires RSTS/E V9.6 or later. Moving right along: I also wrote an MS-DOS Finger implementation. That isn't as useless as it sounds. If you just say "finger", you get the message "You are the only user, of course". But like RSTS/E Finger, it uses DECnet (Pathworks or whatever product name du jour that product has). The code still exists, but I don't know of any modern Microsoft Windows system that has a DECnet stack available for it. If anyone knows of a DECnet implementation that runs under Windows 10, let me know and I'll resurrect MS-DOS finger as a CLI application for Windows. I can even sign it 8-} Once I have VMS and RSTS/E Finger updated to where I want them, I'd love to have a network interoperability bake-off with as many other implementations as possible. Probably the oddest one I ran into in my testing 30+ years ago was the front-end CPU for a Cray. -- Terri Kennedy _______________________________________________ HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se