Uniquely identifying a user: is it possible?

[Greg Comeau]

In article <25845 at cup.portal.com> thad at cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>Examples abound re: nlist()'ing /unix, so that's not the problem.  The question
>was whether there's a non-privileged way of accurately identifying the user.
>It appears there is NO such way per (email) responses received to date.
>My purpose was not to audit, but to write a PD "who" that would highlight the
>present user (either with "*" or reverse video or whatever's applicable) per:
>	$ who
>	thad      w1          Jan 10 01:59
>	thad    * p0          Jan 12 00:32

Um, if that's what you want to do then assuming (there's that work again!)
a non-esotric use of windows why not just cross check the /dev/tty minor/
major with the minor/major of the dev stored in u/w/tmp?

Or you could even
write a shell script comboing probably the who command, the tty command,
and the sed command.

>And, don't laugh; I've had over 16 people (myself multiple times, too) logged
>into one of my UNIXPCs at ONE TIME.

Interesting.  Via what mechanism?
-- 
Greg, Comeau Computing, 91-34 120th Street, Richmond Hill, NY, 11418
Producers of CC C++, SysAdm columnist for UNIX Today!, Microsoft Systems Journal
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