[comp.unix.misc] Where does mail info come from in finger ?

tibors@ee.ubc.ca (tibor szikszai) (06/14/91)

I looked at the source for finger, but I couldn't find anything that
seems to be checking any files for whether the person being fingered
has mail or not.  So I am curious about how things like "No unread
mail." or "New mail received ...  Unread since ..." or "Mail last read ..."
get printed.  Does anybody know?  Is another daemon doing this job?

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (06/15/91)

In article <1669@fs1.ee.ubc.ca> tibors@ee.ubc.ca (tibor szikszai) writes:
>
>I looked at the source for finger, but I couldn't find anything that
>seems to be checking any files for whether the person being fingered
>has mail or not.  So I am curious about how things like "No unread
>mail." or "New mail received ...  Unread since ..." or "Mail last read ..."

  Not all fingers are created equal.  Some are more willing to intrude
on privacy than others.

>get printed.  Does anybody know?  Is another daemon doing this job?

 daemon ?  Do you mean you looked at fingerd sources?  Usually the fingerd
daemon merely invokes the local finger command and pipes the output back
to the network connection.  On a Sun, the output of 'strings /usr/ucb/finger'
contains '/usr/ucb/mail'.



-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940

edw@sequent.UUCP (Ed Wright) (06/17/91)

In article <1669@fs1.ee.ubc.ca> tibors@ee.ubc.ca (tibor szikszai) writes:
%
%I looked at the source for finger, but I couldn't find anything that
%seems to be checking any files for whether the person being fingered
%has mail or not.  So I am curious about how things like "No unread
%mail." or "New mail received ...  Unread since ..." or "Mail last read ..."
%get printed.  Does anybody know?  Is another daemon doing this job?

The mail info is just a check of mtime and atime on the user's mail box.
I don't recall ever getting that information back from finger however.

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