Homework & Coursework Questions

Shell script "whoson"

Use and complete the template provided. The entire template must be completed. If you don't, your post may be deleted!

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data:

write a script that will tell you who is logged in the unix system here by using the names in the roster file

2. Relevant commands, code, scripts, algorithms:

finger who grep id > /dev/null

3. The attempts at a solution (include all code and scripts):

finger | cut -c1-20 | egrep -f /accounts/classes/.../roster | sort -u

4. Complete Name of School (University), City (State), Country, Name of Professor, and Course Number (Link to Course):
University of Missouri St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA, Antognoli J, CS2750

Note: Without school/professor/course information, you will be banned if you post here! You must complete the entire template (not just parts of it).

---------- Post updated at 04:41 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:22 PM ----------

I figured it out!

Very well! Congrats - and don't forget to come back to here when you made a habit out of solving your Unix questions yourself, we always appreciate new experts. ;-))

A small thing: it is a welcomed practice to post the answer once it is found to a problem you presented. This gives the people who are trying to help a chance to learn something in exchange for their offered help.

On a side note: in real-world systems "finger" (to be precise: the "fingerd" daemon, which is the server part of this protocol) is often shut down for security reasons, so in a real world-world situation you wouldn't want to rely on this service. Instead you can use "who", which only works locally and doesn't give that much information as finger, but is less of a security concern.

For more information about the inner workings on the finger protocol: RFC748 and RFC1288.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Moderator's Comments:

I changed the title to reflect the status of this thread.