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Ask HN: Do you user finger or other "old" protocols?

5 points by shortrounddev2 ↗ HN
Does anyone here use the finger protocol? I am interested in older protocols and want to see what other people are using. I recently set up a Gemini server (not old) and wanted to see what other people were using out there other than the web

17 comments

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0xdeadbeefbabe
ssh and ftp over ssh.
shortrounddev2
I use sftp and sshfs-win for my gemini server so I can edit my gemlogs as text files with vs code and have them update immediately on the server
OhMeadhbh
I'm not sure what qualifies as "old" -- I would use finger if anyone still launched xinetd by default. I use sftp a bit. That's probably better supported than ftp, but has essentially the same user experience. I use IRC as well as discord and, of course, I use SMTP and IMAP quite a bit. I set up a Gopher server about a decade ago and it looks like I forgot about it and it hasn't been active for the last 5 years. I think three people visited it over 5 years.

Oh. I'm trying to setup a Genera server, and it requires NFSv2, so I think that counts as an "old" protocol. And honestly, Microsoft's lackluster support of mDNS in WSL has me thinking I'm going to launch an NIS/Yellow Pages + NFS/Home Directory server in my house so I can use host names instead of IP addresses for my home LAN with WSL.

I'm just sort of remembering when I worked for Convex in the early 90s. We had a bazillion x/terminals and NIS/NFS, so you could wander around the building and log in anywhere. The X/Terminals knew how to authenticate you using NIS and your home directory would follow you from supercomputer to supercomputer. I think some people had set up virtual desktops so when you logged out of one X/Terminal and logged into the next, your desktop bounced back up right where you left off.

Oh. And we had fiber to the terminal so a couple machines could do video conferencing between our buildings and the UT Dallas campus next door.

Ah. The good old days, when stuff just worked (obviously I'm not talking about video conferencing here. Dang if that wasn't nearly impossible to set up. But everything else was pretty seamless.)

shortrounddev2
I set up fingerd on my server, but it seems like you can't configure it to hide some information about your (the IP you logged in with, full name or user and email, etc.), so I decided to remove it. Would be cool if there was a more configurable p2p type protocol for discovering restricted info about other people on *nix systems
salawat
...What are you trying to achieve?

I mean, really, think about it.

If you're just looking for their info against an AC'able backend, LDAP or a generic sql backend with the right tables.

The entire point of finger was to get the hardware to give you an idea of who/where the person was in the network.

Things like servers were not meant to only be used by orgs, they were meant to be used by people too.

OhMeadhbh
That's a good point. But LDAP is usually administered by an organization. Most individuals don't have permission to edit their leaf records in the orgs I know that do LDAP. So... yeah... depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want something org-focused and regular, LDAP is good. But if I wanted to publish my own info, maybe putting LDAP-ish records in a dotfile that some server serves out by mDNS would be a decent idea. Corporate guys who freak out over mDNS could just prevent it from traversing corporate owned switches. Everyone else would be on their own to figure out if individuals are leaking too much info.
nvy
I use IRC and NNTP regularly, and ftp occasionally.

Those are the only "old" protocols I'm aware of that I use, unless you count TCP.

bruce511
I'm still active in a newsgroup (NNTP) everyday. It's old tech, but easily accessible via Thunderbird. It's still a really simple way to have organised (but controlled/ behind-login threaded conversations)

There are other techs now to do this, of course, but migrating the whole group would be a hassle. And we're not beholden to some big-tech group for our existence.

kirubakaran
I telnet some GET / HTTP/1.1 to some old servers once in a while for old times sake
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runjake
I used to, back when they were a thing: uucp, finger, gopher, talk, wall, rcp, nntp ;) etc. Not for over a couple decades now, though. I don't carry any particular nostalgia for any of them.

I did have to troubleshoot a WAIS[1] protocol issue this week, however. I am the only person in my company who's heard of WAIS, let alone directly used it. Nonetheless, a WAIS server somewhere started malfunctioning and library searches broke and it became a high priority thing.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server

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