[Courses] [FS] a socket + finger question

[Laura Bowser]

I haven't looked at the source code for fingerd, but for security 
reasons, you don't want to be opening a named pipe.  It's possible for 
programs to check what type of file it's trying to open, and ignore as 
appropriate.  More than likely, this is what's going on with fingerd

Laura



On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 12:59  PM, Madhavan, Srivatsan wrote:

> Hi --
>
> I might be jumping ahead of time, too far ahead - but i am too
> curious to know if anyone can explain this.
>
> I have a .plan file on my home directory (in my school account).
> Users withing the same network can finger me, and see the contents
> of  the .plan file as well.
>
> I replaced the .plan file with a named pipe called .plan,
> and set up a background process whose job was to pick
> a new fortune cookie each time and write it to .plan.
>
> My idea was that everytime somebody finger'ed me, they'd
> get a new fortune cookie too. But it didn't work. finger
> behaved as if there was no .plan file at all. Any clue why ?
>
> --
> Vatsan.
>
> Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
>
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