Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!mimsy!aplcen!aplcomm!trn@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
From: trn@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (Tony Nardo)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: 'cron', 'fingerd', and 'nobody'
Message-ID: <2489@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 88 12:26:48 GMT
Sender: news@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
Reply-To: trn@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (Tony Nardo)
Organization: Johns Hopkins University/APL (Baltimore, Md.)
Lines: 27

Since posting my article about changing the ownership of 'in.fingerd' to
a user with a non-negative user number, I've received about a dozen messages
asking something along the lines

>  You mentioned that finger shouldn't run under a negative user
>  number.  Could you explain why, please?

As it turns out, SunOS 3.* seems perfectly happy to run 'in.fingerd' with
'nobody' as its user ID.

Under SunOS 4.0, however, 'cron' sends a mail message to root every day at
00:15 complaining about the fact that a daemon has a negative user number.

I do not know *why* 'cron' complains or even cares about the user ID for
'in.fingerd'.  I *do* know that it is rather annoying finging this message
in one's mailbox every morning.

Aside from this nuisance message, 'nobody' works just fine when assigned as
the user name for 'finger' in the /etc/inetd.conf file.

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Q: ???
A: Next to Larkspur
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