Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 22:33:27 -0700 (PDT) From: "John J. Fox IV" <jfox@wizzards.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: finger: permission denied Message-ID: <199907060533.WAA02748@indrani>
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Something has struck me as peculiar; as "root", I am unable to
make use of the "finger" utility. I get "finger: Permission denied"
when I attempt to do so. ('w' and 'who' work as advertised). A
regular user account, however, has no problem using 'finger'.
I've checked manpager, FAQ, and handbook, but failed to find reference
to this phenomenon. I assume at this point that some sort of
security concern is the cause of this, but that's purely a guess.
If anyone could clear this up for me, I would be most grateful.
(I know I don't *need* root to be able to use finger, but at
this point I really would like to know why this happens!)
Thanks,
John
-- For the curious, I include some illustrative output:
As root:
--------
[indrani:~]# whoami
root
[indrani:~]# finger
finger: Permission denied
[indrani:~]# ls -l /usr/bin/finger
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 16104 May 17 20:40 /usr/bin/finger*
As regular user:
----------------
[indrani:~]$ whoami
jfox
[indrani:~]$ finger
Login Name TTY Idle Login Time Office Phone
jfox John J. Fox IV *v0 Mon 21:11
jfox John J. Fox IV *v1 5 Mon 21:26
FWIW, the same behavior obtains with "safe_finger":
(BTW, I have no idea of the functionality differentiating
these two fingers)
As root:
--------
[indrani:~]# whoami
root
[indrani:~]# /usr/local/bin/safe_finger
finger: Permission denied
[indrani:~]# ls -l /usr/local/bin/safe_finger
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5080 May 11 03:59 /usr/local/bin/safe_finger*
[indrani:~]#
As regular user:
----------------
[indrani:~]$ whoami
jfox
[indrani:~]$ /usr/local/bin/safe_finger
Login Name TTY Idle Login Time Office Phone
jfox John J. Fox IV *v0 Mon 21:11
jfox John J. Fox IV *v2 Mon 21:35
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