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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: kallio@jyu.fi (Seppo Kallio), luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it,
        questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Why "finger" takes so long ? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 05 Sep 95 10:20:57 PDT."
             <199509051720.KAA23606@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
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Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 19:07:04 PDT
From: Bill Fenner <fenner@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <95Sep5.190707pdt.177475@crevenia.parc.xerox.com>
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In message <199509051720.KAA23606@phaeton.artisoft.com> you write:
>> 2:14pm@itu:~% time finger kallio
>> Login: kallio                           Name: Seppo Kallio
>> Directory: /export/lk/kallio            Shell: /usr/local/bin/tcsh
>> On since Tue Sep  5 14:12 (EET DST) on ttyp0 from zaphod.maccc.jyu
>> No Mail.
>> 0.249u 1.666s 0:32.25 5.8% 21+439k 1926+14io 0pf+0w
>> 2:15pm@itu:~%
>> 
>> I have 1776 accounts but idle node, not many users yet.
>
[...]
>Probably what is happening is that the directory is large enough
>that the full set of directory entries in the home directory that
>contains the users for your system isn't in cache all at once.

I suspect that the real problem is a combination of the hide() bug (finger 
stat()'s ~user/.nofinger for every user in the passwd file; fixed in -current) 
and the less-than-ideal behavior of finger when you give it a username but 
don't give it -m.  I think that the non-mflag case should try getpwnam() on 
the argument first, before walking the whole passwd file, since people will 
often just type "finger username" when what they mean is "finger -m username".

  Bill