
Things that can stand improvement in GNU Finger.

* Use syslog instead of stderr for daemon messages -- DONE 12/16/91

* Use dbm or some such for data files.

* When requesting long information for a user without an account on
  a local machine, forward to the machine this user was last seen on.

* Update texinfo documentation.

* Use HP cluster interface to get client utmp info without polling.
	-- DONE 6/29/92

* Do sanity checks on incoming finger packets.  -- DONE 7/1/92

* Try to look up remote fingerer using authuser(3).  Pass that
  info along to .fingerrc script if available. -- DONE 10/28/92

* Use memory mapped files for more efficient access to userdata and hostdata
  files.

=============

Ideas for a complete redesign of a distributed network finger system

* Merge fingerd, in.fingerd, in.cfingerd all into one:  have one
  daemon running permanently on each machine.

  - program running all the time.
  + less static overhead
  + simpler setup
  + faster response (no program startup time)

* No polling.  Client daemons send 'diff' info to master daemon only
  when necessary.

  + Less bandwidth required
  + Changes in user data can be detected efficiently through stat()
    on relevant files.
  + Checks can be very frequent, keeping data highly uptodate
    (no delays due to polling cycle).

* Use fast RPC (UDP-based) whereever possible for data exchange

* Gather more machine-based stats, like console idle time, load, uptime.
  Make rwho and rup obsolete.

