Re: network finger

[Bob Proulx]

Alfredo Tomasini wrote:
>   I am trying to use rthe network feature under my linux SLACKWARE 11 
> ...
> and I get all time this error
> 
> gawk: finger.awk:3: fatal: can't open two way socket 
> `/inet/tcp/0/localhost/finger' for input/output (No such file or directory)

This probably means that the finger service is not running or not
accepting connections from the localhost.  This is typically because
for security reasons "extra" servives are disabled by default.

You can check if the port is open using a number of tools such as nmap
and others but simplest is to telnet to the port.

  $ telnet localhost 79
  Trying 127.0.0.1...
  telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

That would verify the same behavior as displayed by GNU awk.  If you
want it to work with finger then you would need to install and enable
the fingerd on your machine.  But if you are simply trying to learn a
new programming feature then installing fingerd isn't recommended.
Instead simply switch to using a different service on the local host
such as SMTP or other running service.  Here is an example using
SMTP.

    BEGIN {
      NetService = "/inet/tcp/0/localhost/smtp"
      print "QUIT\r\n" |& NetService
      while ((NetService |& getline) > 0)
        print $0
      close(NetService)
    }

Bob