Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 17:18:08 -0700 From: Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@rahul.net> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: showing full host names in output from who/finger/last Message-ID: <199904110018.AA21927@bolero-x.rahul.net>
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For some years I have been using patched utilities under SunOS to show
full host names in the output from the 'who', 'finger', and 'last'
commands. (Traditional UNIXes truncate host names to about 16
characters.)
I have been thinking of patching FreeBSD programs to do the same, but
since I have been updating my source tree often, it will be a bit
painful to maintain my changes through the updates. So I will do it
only if the FreeBSD developers would be willing to incorporate my
changes into the official FreeBSD source tree. Below is what I would
do -- tell me if it could be make a part of FreeBSD.
- Update all programs that write to utmp and wtmp to check the host name
length, and if it's too long, insert the IP address instead
- Update all of the above programs, if they accept a host name on the
command line, to also accept an additional argument that specifies
the IP address.
- Update all programs that invoke the above programs and supply a
host name to also supply the IP address.
- Update all programs that look up wtmp and utmp such that, if they find
an IP address, they do a double-reverse DNS resolution (IP address ->
fqdn -> IP address) and, if successful and consistent, display the
host name instead of the IP address. The user may if he wishes supply
a command-line argument to suppress the reverse resolution and cause
the IP address to be displayed directly.
For example, rlogind might invoke /usr/bin/login as:
/usr/bin/login -h 98.portland-23-24rs.or.dial-access.att.net -i 12.73.137.98
/usr/bin/login notices that the host name is too long, inserts
12.73.137.98 into utmp and wtmp. If no -i argument is available,
/usr/bin/login would do a forward DNS resolution of the host name to get
the IP address.
Below are samples from the 'last' and 'finger' commands with only the
really long host names included and some information x'd out to protect
user privacy. (Obviously comumnar alignment doesn't work as well for
very long host names, but only a small fraction are that long. The rest
will display normally in aligned columns.)
== output from 'finger ==
Login Name Idle When Where
xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 7 Apr 9 13:14 kaibab.redbacknetworks.com
xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Apr 10 16:37 dyn164.rahul.net
xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx 8 Apr 10 16:48 c166.ppp.tsoft.com
xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx Apr 9 23:35 \
cxxxxxxx-x.xxxxx.occa.home.com
xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx * 10 Apr 10 16:44 01-025.006.popsite.net
== output from 'last' ==
xxx s1 98.portland-23-24rs.or.dial-access.att.net Sat Apr 10 16:50 - 16:50 (00:00)
xxxxxx rd oak-hiper1b-145-145.dialup.slip.net Sat Apr 10 16:48 - 16:51 (00:03)
xxxx p6 netcom14.netcom.com Sat Apr 10 15:36 - 15:39 (00:03)
xxxxx s2 adsl-xxx-xxx-xxx-10.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net Sat Apr 10 13:51 - 13:52 (00:00)
xxxxxxxx sb tnt9-xxx-xxx-17-189.dialup.HiWAAY.net Sat Apr 10 12:54 - 14:54 (02:00)
xxxxxx s2 oak-hiper1a-15-79.dialup.slip.net Sat Apr 10 12:37 - 12:40 (00:02)
xxxx r2 dnai-207-181-255-82.dialup.dnai.com Sat Apr 10 11:41 - 13:58 (02:17)
xxxxxxx q8 sdn-ar-001casfraP195.dialsprint.net Sat Apr 10 08:28 - 13:30 (05:01)
== END ==
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