17 Sep
2024
17 Sep
'24
4:29 a.m.
On 2024-09-16 22:05, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
As can be seen, the Tops-20 finger client has been
modified to send the
name of the local user and optional data identifying the finger client.
Probably I'll change that to the finger version. The RFC for TCP/IP
finger is (naturally) silent on what you can send over DECnet, so this
doesn't break anything. So, I can finger myself on MIM:: just fine,
viz:
DECnet uses the same sorts of qualifiers as the TCP/IP version.
I had added a "/IAM=" qualifier to both VMS and RSTS/E Finger, but
it is too easily abused in the modern age, particularly where not all
nodes are under common management. The original intent was to have
the server display "The user has the following unread mail messages
from you" with a number, date/time, and subject.
I will be removing it from both VMS and RSTS/E Finger (it will no
longer send /IAM and will silently ignore any incoming /IAM).
If you have a finger client that can do DECnet
connections on another
platform (I'm thinking VMS or maybe RSTS) and can try it, let me know
how you make out. Be aware that I did just hack this together in two
and a half days, so I make no claims to any sort of stability. I'm
just trying to trouble shoot at this point.
As soon as I get on HECnet, I'll be glad to do any interoperabil-
ity testing you want (and both the VAX and RSTS/E systems will have
guest accounts, so you'll be able to log in and test for yourself).
The currently implemented qualifiers in VMS Finger are:
/ALL /BATCH /BYPASS /CPUTIME /FULL /HELP
/IDLETIME /IMAGENAME /INTERACTIVE /LOCATION
/LOGINTIME /MESSAGE /NETWORK /PERSONALNAME /PID
/PROCESSNAME /SIZE /SORT /STATE /SUBPROCESS
/SWAPPED /SYSTEM /TERMINAL /TTTYPE /USERNAME
RSTS/E Finger ignores the ones that aren't relevant to that plat-
form (or aren't implemented).
I propose we add a "/COMMENT=quoted-string" qualifier. Implemen-
tations that don't support it will either complain or silently ig-
nore it. Implementations that support it may choose to log that
info (and anything else they care to) in an implementation-specific
manner. I further suggest that the comment have a formal (if un-
documented 8-) syntax, for example:
/COMMENT="NODE:nodename,USER:username,VERS:finger-version"
This will let humans (and possibly programs) parse that info with
relative ease.
What do people think about that?