bfox@AUREL.CNS.CALTECH.EDU (Brian Fox) (07/05/90)
Archive-name: gnu-finger/30-Jun-90 Original-posting-by: bfox@AUREL.CNS.CALTECH.EDU (Brian Fox) Original-subject: Finger 1.0 beta release. Archive-site: prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38] Archive-directory: /pub/gnu Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) [ This software will soon be available for anonymous uucp on osu-cis and anonymous ftp on gatekeeper.dec.com. ] Forwarded-For: bfox@aurel.cns.caltech.edu (Brian Fox) Hi. I have placed GNU Finger (1.0 Beta) on prep.ai.mit.edu in the file /pub/gnu/finger-1.0b.tar.Z. Introduction ************ GNU Finger is a utility program designed to allow users of Unix hosts on the Internet network to get information about each other. It is a direct replacement for the Berkeley 4.3 finger code. Why Another Finger? =================== With the onset of more-power-per-person computing, the mainframe has been set aside. A modern computing facility usually consists of one user per host, and many hosts per site. This makes it a trial to find out about logged on users at another site, since you must query each host to find out about the single user who is logged on. If the site had 20 hosts, you would have to invoke a finger program 20 times just to find out who was logged on! GNU Finger is a simple and effective way around this problem. For sites with many hosts, a single host may be designated as the finger "server" host. This host collects information about who is logged on to other hosts at that site. If a user at site A wants to know about users logged on at site B, only the server host need be queried, instead of each host at that site. This is very convenient. GNU Finger is a direct replacement for existing finger programs, with enhancments. A user at site A (e.g. MIT) may now see the picture of a user at site B (e.g. Caltech), simply by typing a finger request! The conversion of graphic data from one format to another is done through GNU Finger; no site need know where or how such images are stored on any other site to be able to display those images. Finger delivers information about users in varying formats, depending on how it is invoked. `finger' invoked with no switch arguments performs a *site wide* finger request, no matter which machine it has been invoked from. Switch arguments exist for getting the ``long'' form of finger information and for getting information only about the local machine. GNU Finger also runs a "server" process on a given host, whose job is to keep track of which users are logged in to local machines. Brian Fox PS: Send bug reports to bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu or gnUSENET newsgroup gnu.utils.bug (but not both; they are the same thing).