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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!umd5.umd.edu!roissy.umd.edu!mark From: mark@roissy.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Strange idle times with finger... Date: 21 May 1993 22:04:47 GMT Organization: University of Maryland Lines: 27 Message-ID: <1tjjlv$ovh@umd5.umd.edu> References: <C7B7Jn.sH@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <rearl.737938244@cave> NNTP-Posting-Host: roissy.umd.edu In article <rearl.737938244@cave> rearl@cave.tcp.com (Robert Earl) writes: >mike@hopper.Virginia.EDU (Michael Chapman) writes: > >| I'm running NEWS-OS 4.1c (4.3BSD) and when I finger on my machine, idle >| times are outrageously false - > >| mike Mike Chapman *:0 18d Wed 18:13 > >The finger program only reads the utmp file and stat()s the appropriate >tty devices; it typically doesn't bother to check if there are active ... and many computers with XDM or something similar list the user as being on the console, when, in fact, _nothing_ has touched /dev/console for 18 days. Try "who" to see the utmp entries. for example, my HP 710: % finger Login Name TTY Idle When Bldg. Phone mark Mark Sienkiewicz con 023: Fri 13:31 mark Mark Sienkiewicz sd 16 Fri 13:31 mark Mark Sienkiewicz sc Fri 17:40 % who mark console May 21 13:31 mark pty/ttysd May 21 13:31 mark pty/ttysc May 21 17:40