os x refuses connection of "finger" command

A

AlanCE

Registered
why is this? when i try to do "finger user@ip" to another os x machine it immediately says connection refused even with the personal firewall shut off. any idea how i can get os x machines to respond to finger commands?
 
My guess is that you just have turn it on in xinitd.d look at the file /etc/xinetd.d/finger and change the line which says disable = yes to a disable = no and reboot. If you know the pid of xinetd you shoud be able to get by with sending it a SIGHUP via 'kill -s HUP pid' with the correct pid instead of the reboot.

Now after going through all of that I ask are you sure that you want it on? You know it is a favorite security hole for people to start attacking your machine dontcha? ;)

-Eric
 
well, one particular mail server and client uses finger notification to tell a client when new mail has arrived, precluding the need to have the mail clients checking mail at regular intervals. kind of nice in a large network. this would only be recommended if that network's firewall was set up to not allow the finger command from outside due to the security problems you mentioned. thanks for the reply.
 
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