14 Sep
2024
14 Sep
'24
10:37 p.m.
Yes, the Columbia VMS version of finger was written by the system
manager of the Chemistry VAX/780, creatively named "CUCHEM::" I think I
remember it being written in Fortran, but I don't remember why he did it
that way. One assumes it was because he didn't know either Macro-32 or
Bliss. I forget his name (I'll probably remember it after I hit
send...) We had already been running finger servers on DECnet on our
20's for some time. Sure wish I could find that code.
Finger on a Tops-20 cluster needed no changes as they had DECnet running
over the CI. So, you could finger the entire cluster, which was
impressive for the time: something between 200 to 300 users. There was
a new JSYS called INFO% that they created for cluster support, that
would enable you get certain kinds of information via a GETAB% executed
on the target machine.
If you are handing Tops-20 Finger an RFC822 address, then I believe it
will do forwarding for you. We put that in for systems that were still
at 4.x.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Sep 13, 2024 at 6:33 PM Terri Kennedy
<terri-hecnet(a)glaver.org> wrote:
The aaareadme.txt file there says:
| DECUS FINGER DIFFERENCES
| ========================
| This is a list of things I can think of which differ.
|
| /HELP to the server is the only documentation. This is a munged
copy of the DECUS Finger help file. I haven't given documentation any
serious consideration yet.
|
| This is a clusterwide finger (/CLUSTER is default).
|
| New mail message headers are never listed (I haven't yet figured
out how to match addresses so it only displays messages from the
person doing the Finger).
|
| There is no Finger database. Names are read from the SYSUAF
owner field. The entire SYSUAF is read at startup, and updated as
needed for new accounts. There is not presently an easy way to
disable printing the owner name.
|
| Added fields for account and nodename.
|
| No support for /SYSTEM, /IDLETIME, /TTTYPE, or /SWAPPED.
|
| /SORT only supports account, CPU time, Login time, and Username
(Username is the default).
|
| Differs a bit in what an interactive process is.
|
| Only supports one filename for finger plan (default FINGER.PLN).
Also prints a project line (FINGER.PROJECT).
|
| The format of the process listing (which fields can be displayed,
which columns, and how wide the fields are) can be easily configured
| at assembly time.
|
| No support for Jnet, or TCP other then UCX/Multinet, at this time.
|
| The server will not forward Finger requests. Commands like
Finger @watsun@cunixc are not valid.
So it seems that there was some contributions from one to the other
(before my maintainership).
The PSU one is in Macro-32. That's the sign of someone who REALLY
likes Macro-32. DEC folks would probably have used Bliss-32. The
Columbia one (which turned into DECUS Finger) is written almost
entirely in Fortran, probably because Fortran was the only sensible
cross-architecture language of the era (while I'm pretty sure one
could write a Finger implementation in COBOL or RPG II, I don't envy
the life of anyone who would try it 8-).
I'm not sure what the state of cluster support is in DECUS Finger - by
the time I released 5.1.35 I only had a single Alpha node. I'll have
to see how it is on a cluster and add that support if not present for
V52.2.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 9/14/24 4:12 PM, Terri Kennedy wrote:
So, that was all before I started work on it. So the current VMS
Finger is probably a later version of the one maintained at PSU.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 2024-09-14 14:49, Dan Cross wrote:
I'm not sure about this part; as I understood it, Bryan wrote Penn
State finger from scratch. I find a version of it online:
https://www.digiater.com/openvms/freeware/v40/finger/psfinger/
But it seems that it's getting hard to come by. On my Alpha, I found
version 1.5, but I can't find that online (at least not in my cursory
search). I'm happy to upload that somewhere if anyone would like.