[HECnet] Re: FINGER survey...

On 2024-06-07 17:00, Keith Halewood wrote: I'd be quite happy to run a DECnet version of finger server on the VMS instances I have running here but not the TCP/IP version because they are generally not available to the internet. I've tended to use PHONE DIR when attempting to see if someone is logged in but that's mainly for a nostalgic excluse to use VMS mail or phone. Keith -----Original Message----- From: Johnny Billquist [mailto:bqt@softjar.se] Sent: 07 June 2024 15:32 To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se> Subject: [HECnet] FINGER survey... I've been busy with my silly things as usual, and lately implemented a FINGER client and server for RSX, and I realized there are a couple of things to maybe check with other people on HECnet. First of all - finger as such is a (sortof) well known tool/service on the TCP/IP internet. And I've had a finger server and client for TCP/IP under RSX for a long time, but have never really shared it, since it was a bit "odd". But even before this, I knew of a FINGER implementation available from DECUS for RSX. I've known that I wanted to make FINGER available for others for a long time, but recently I started thinking of also adding in DECnet capability in my finger implementation. So the last few weeks I've been tinkering with this, and I've finally completed the work and made my new finger implementation available as a package. The FINGER from DECUS mentions the following: FINGER is a utility to display information about a selected user or group of users. It can be invoked for users on the local node or on a remote node over DECnet, and is com- patible with the VMS implimentation of FINGER. Full function- ality requires an RSX-11M+ system with resource accounting and DECnet. So, not only have there been this RSX implementation from DECUS, there apparently also exist(ed) an implementation from somewhere for VMS. FINGER over TCP uses the well known TCP port 79, while the DECUS RSX (and I assume VMS) DECnet implementation uses object number 117. My implementation then responds to both these access paths, as well as being able to query locally, and also try to connect to remote systems using either of these methods. And I now have this running on MIM:: So my questions are: . Do anyone else have any finger service running on any HECnet node? . Do anyone else know what other implementations even exist, and for which OSes? I do think FINGER is somewhat useful to find who might be logged in and active, as well as finding out more information about people on different systems in general. On the internet, finger servers are nowadays unusual to see, since privacy and security concerned people just feel that finger gives out way too much information anonymously. So I am not encouraging people to run this if they have such concerns. But like I said, personally, I do find it useful, and will keep it available on any RSX system that I am running. Johnny