when i do finger <user>, i get

$ finger root
Login: root Name: root
Directory: /root Shell: /bin/bash
Never logged in.
New mail received Sun Dec 8 04:05 2002 (EST)
Unread since Mon Nov 18 19:55 2002 (EST)
No Plan.


but i logged as root account many times before this, and the last command verifies it...

$ last root
root :0 Tue Dec 3 22:19 - 22:20 (00:00)
root :0 Tue Dec 3 22:19 - 22:19 (00:00)


this happens for all users, not only root. How do i get the finger command to show the last login for every user (instead of using last command)?

i have redhat 8.0.
thx

Hmmmm, I have the same thing happening here. I don't think regular users have the priveledge to get that info.

well if i log in as root and i do a finger on a user i get the same output...

i searched other forums and they were saying something about sharing the utmp file or wmup file or something with the finger command. cause, the last command looks into that file for info..but the finger command doesnt.....but they weren't very clear as to how to fix it.....

was wondering if anyone here wold know about this ???

thx

They are probably referring to the permissions of the utmp file. Usually it's owned root.root so you would have to allow normal users at least read access to the file.
What does 'ls -l /var/run/utmp' give you?

u have to make lastlog global read

so u do this in rh 8

chmod 644 /var/log/lastlog

problem solved!