utmp and finger

[David Lee]

Re:

> Date:   Fri, 19 May 2000 14:31:02 +0100
> From:   Alex STEPNEY <A.Stepney at cs.ucl.ac.uk>
> To:     samba at samba.org
> Subject: utmp and finger
> 
> I'm trying to set up samba 2.0.7 on our Solaris 2.7 box to
> do some utmp logging. Alls fine except is screws up finger:
> 
> [35] ucacast at lambda: finger @bruce
> [bruce.cs.ucl.ac.uk] 
> finger: Can't stat /dev/smb/1
> [36] ucacast at lambda:
> 
> Any work arounds? can I just logg to wtmp, so that finger
> works and I can do a last? I've tried playing around, but
> can't seem to come up with a solution. Any help will be
> greatly appreciated.

The utmp functionality is brand new and experimental.

Also there are some known faults in the 2.0.7 version, since fixed
with a patch at:
   http://www.dur.ac.uk/~samba/utmp-207.5.patch.gz

although that it probably irrelevant in this case.

Those of us who were involved in developing Samba's utmp code probably
concentrated just on "who", "last" and "w".  I can only presume that none
of us considered "finger".  I never use finger;  indeed, in trying to
reproduce your problem, I had to look at the man page!

The "smb/nnn" nomenclature was an invention of convenience, which worked
(eventually!) for the cases we tried.

I was able to reproduce your problem.  It seems that "finger" wants to use
the "line" as a real connection, and gets upset when it cannot stat
"/dev/smb/1" which doesn't exist (contrast against, say, a terminal login
on "/dev/pts/1").

But I'm not sure what the solution is.

I wonder whether this should be discussed on "samba-technical"?

-- 

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