What's wrong with "finger?"

[Richard Michael Todd]

alexis at panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes:

>When I finger a user who is logged on, it tells me how long that user has
>been on, and on which tty.

>However, finger _always_ says "Never logged in" about anyone who isn't
>logged in currently.

>I don't know much about this, but does finger look through /etc/wtmp? If
>not, what does it do, why isn't it working, and how can I fix it?

  I looked into this last night.  According to the man-page, it looks like
finger gets the last-logged-in information from /usr/adm/lastlog.  
Unfortunately, /usr/adm/lastlog is a Berzerkely-ism and isn't supported by
System V.  Oops.  :-(.  Short of digging the finger source off uunet or some
such archive site and hacking it to grovel through /etc/wtmp instead, there's
no easy way to fix this.  
-- 
Richard Todd   rmtodd at chinet.chi.il.us  or  rmtodd at uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  
"Bible-punching heavyweight evangelistic boxing kangaroos..."