Columbia did an DECnet finger server for Tops-20.  As I recall, we first used the same numeric object type as TCP (I.E., 79), although 117 does not sound unfamiliar for some strange reason...  We certainly could have changed it, but I don't remember why.  Is something else on 79?

The finger server simply listened on a particularly port and when a connect was accepted, it was handed off to a fork with finger mapped and the primary I/O JFN's were set to the network connection.  I don't see that it is on the PANDA distribution, but it's an easy thing to write.

PANDA Tops-20 handles terminal idle time in a somewhat obvious way: the system uptime (in milliseconds) is stored in the terminal block whenever input is detected.  Idle time is computed by subtracting that uptime from the current uptime.  This gives you a nice exact number.

As I recall, it doesn't quite work right with a batch job, but since there is nobody there, this doesn't really matter.  Idle time in that case is detected by CPU consumption.

A DEC monitor does something different, but I don't recall it being as accurate as what PANDA does.

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