How to disable finger service in Solaris 8

Question

I have a request from audit to remove finger service in Solaris 8 machine.

I try putting remark in /etc/inetd.conf and pkill -HUP it, but when i type finger it still there.

Answer 1

Typing finger on the local system will work even if the service is disabled. I believe it queries the utmp file directly. To test the service, however, try:

finger user@host

from another host (substituting an appropriate username and hostname, of course), or:

finger user@localhost

from the system you're testing. You should get a "connection refused" message.

By the way, it is good security practice to go ahead and disable all services that aren't needed.

Answer 2

What do you mean by typing finger? Can you see the service running? To type finger is not the way to test it :)

Answer 3

Use:

netstat -an | grep $PORTNUMBER

to see if it is listening on that port.