Ever wonder if someone hasn't read his mail recently? Ever tried to chase down one of the summer interns -- you know they're on one of the public Dorados running Cedar, but just don't know where? If you have, then Finger is for you! The Finger facility allows Cedar users to query and update a public database consisting of login/logout times, the time that each user last read mail, pointers to pictures of users (which can be displayed when that person is fingered), and arbitrary textual data (finger plans). Fingering can be accomplished either by issuing a command to the executive, or by using a FingerTool. Both people and machines can be fingered. Queries can also be done on any arbitrary field although it may not make a lot of sense (query by picture filename?).

Finger stores information about users (using the Grapevine RName as the entity names) and machines (using the Pup-network name as then entity name). For each user, we store such things as a "nick name", a picture file name and a "plan" (a user's statement of his intentions) in addition to keeping the time of the last login or logout and the last time at which the user read mail using Walnut (sorry, Peanut users!). For a machine, we store such things as the owner of the machine, the location of the machine, whether it is a gateway or network, the net address of the machine, what sort of color monitor it has, and the last user. The Finger database is initialized by using the pup-network information stored on [indigo]<portola>pup-network.txt (which is reasonably accurate although not perfect - use Fingertool to make corrections).

The Finger program is intended to be a part of the checkpoints on every machine (to keep the Finger database accurate). Before making a checkpoint, run the command "Install BasicFingerPackage", which loads only enough of finger to record logins and idle transitions (uses only 3 GFIs). BasicFingerPackage logs changes on the user's machine (in the file ///Temp/Finger.Log) and then replays this log through a remote finger server -- this means that the unavailability of the finger server or the Alpine server storing the Finger database will not prevent you from using a machine having BasicFingerPackage in its checkpoint! Because of the way ///Temp/Finger.Log is used, a machine should have only one copy of BasicFingerPackage running. Running multiple copies will result in an FS error reporting a locked file condition.

A FingerTool can be created by executing the "FingerTool" command. Any number of FingerTools can coexist. When the tool is opened, two action buttons appear at the top: perform finger and store changes. Underneath these buttons are fields that will display attributes of a fingered individual, and a viewer in which the contents of AIS picture files are displayed.

Refer to FingerSchemaDoc.Tioga.

Finger uses the user profile entry "Finger.segment" as the name of the finger database. This should be part of the machine profile for each Cedar machine, rather than being part of an individual's profile. BasicFingerPackage uses the user profile entry "Finger.RemoteHost" as the name of the Finger server machine. It defaults to "Ebbetts".