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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.campus.mci.net!calweb!gigo!jfesler From: jfesler@gigo.com (Jason Fesler) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD & GNU fingerd-1.37 Date: 17 Dec 95 13:13:46 Organization: Fidonet: WavePoint * jfesler@wavepoint.com or gigo.com Lines: 25 Message-ID: <60d_9512171320@gigo.com> References: <4asduh$d1@easy2.mediacity.com> <4au2g7$ncd@dim.intersurf.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: gigo.com -=> Quoting winter@intersurf.com to All <=- wi> I don't think it would be very difficult to write a finger that would wi> use rwho data to keep track of who is logged on. All you would have wi> to do is define which machines you wanted to list... I use a different approach. All machines, once a minute, update an ascii file (one per machine) that shows who is online. ( basically, a cron'd "w >`hostname`"). Also, once a minute, the portmaster database is dumped to similiar files (with username, IP address, etc etc). My fingerd merely reads those files, effectively doing a "grep" for that username (or IP address) from the ascii files, to show where a person might be online. [Of course, the standard finger info, w/out "last login" info, is shown]. Makes it several times faster, and doens't rely on the user actually being logged into any particular host - even users coming in SLIP/PPP are shown as online (with IP address). Alas, my finger port is blocked via the router at the moment, otherwise I'd say give it a whirl :-) However, hopefully I've given some food for thought for ways to make yours faster :-)