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Could my 10 year old SDF account still exist?

I had forgotten about SDF but seeing SDF instance on Lemmy caught my attention. I used to use SDF for a while about 10 years ago and now it would be interesting to see if I have left anything interesting there.

I found my notes from ten years ago so I know what my username was. I don't remember my password though. I tried to log in but to no avail. Is there any way to know whether my account still exists? Do accounts get removed if they're not used for long periods of time?

in reply to siipale

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
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You can run the command finger username@sdf.org to see if an account with that name exists.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

murph
murph
• •
Does that work for you? I tried it locally, and got no results. I also tried it from a shell on sdf, and also got no results.
in reply to murph

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
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@murph It does. Try finger jlamothe@sdf.org (that's me).
@murph

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

murph
murph
• •
It does work for your account, but not mine. Is it something that needs to be explicitly enabled, or the information put in somewhere?
in reply to murph

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
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@murph It was argued that you need to have a ~/.plan file, but I do not have one.

I do not recall having had to do anything to enable it.

@murph

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
•

So, after a little more digging, I found that what is displayed by finger can be changed with SDF's maint command.

I may or may not have done this. I can't remember for certain. It's also possible that the default settings were different 10 years ago.

Have you tried emailing membership@sdf.org?

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in reply to siipale

Frater Mus
Frater Mus
• •
Could my 10 year old SDF account still exist?


Mine does. I finally remembered to log back in and there she is...

Caveat: the hostname had changed; I signed up at lonestar.sdf.org IIRC (no longer extant) and now it is on freeshell.org

I found my notes from ten years ago so I know what my username was


Another caveat: I think usernames were truncated to 8 chars in that time period. Don't know if that's the case now or not, or if extra chars are thrown away anyhow.

in reply to Frater Mus

jboy
jboy
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You likely signed up when it was sdf.lonestar.org but I think SDF has had the sdf.org domain for 15+ years at this point, and the freeshell.org domain has been around for over twenty.
in reply to jboy

ddh
ddh
• •
Don’t forget sdf-eu.org, if thats what you originally used.
in reply to ddh

siipale
siipale
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I actually tried to finger the same usernames on sdfeu.org and it reports no such user so I guess it's not there.
in reply to Frater Mus

siipale
siipale
• •

I tried finger as the other commenter suggested. I tried bunch of variations. Whole username, 8 chars truncated, and a shorter version which was in my notes. I also tried both sdf.org and freeshell.org. All of them gave me an empty output. I guess the fact that it didn't output no such user means it must be either of them. Or all of them refer to the same user.

I also found an email sent from my sdf user. The address in format username@sdf.org had the whole username (more than 8 chars). Then there's the shortest version of the name in my notes. That's written as sdf.lonestar.org/1/users/username. No idea what that refers to. Seems I didn't take very good notes. So which of these would more probably be the correct one?

in reply to siipale

chance
chance
• •

For finger to work remotely, you have to have set up a .plan file as well as applied correct permissions to it at the time in your home directory.

I have a .plan file, I get that response from finger when I'm on SDF but it doesn't work when I do the lookup remotely. I don't recall the needed permissions.

$ finger chance

Login: chance                   Name: Chance Platt

Directory: /sdf/arpa/af/c/chance        Shell: /usr/pkg/bin/bash

On since Sun Jun  9 09:56 2024 (UTC) on pts/19 from 99.162.15.208

Mail last read Sun Jun  9 09:48 2024 (UTC)

Plan: I'm friendly-like.

Now, since you know your username, there is a password reset mechanism:

Password Reset at SDF Wiki

logging_in_to_sdf_servers []

wiki.sdf.org
This entry was edited (6 months ago)
in reply to chance

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
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This is not true. I do not have a ~/.plan file. I just double checked in case I set one up and forgot about it.

finger still pulls some basic information without one.

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in reply to chance

siipale
siipale
• •
I tried recover but it says no such user. It very well might be that I didn't set up any password recovery ten years ago. So either there's no user with that login anymore or it reports no such user because it's not set up for recovery. Maybe I'll try make a new user with same username.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

chance
chance
• •

You know what, I just checked, and account expiry is covered in the FAQ.

It might well be expired.

I second emailing membership, they might be able to help you. Or if you trust one of us, we might be able to check, as well.

SDF Public Access UNIX System - Free Shell Account and Shell Access

sdf.org
in reply to siipale

siipale
siipale
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I just found my old gopher page. Given that's still up the user account must be there. Is the username listed on gopherspace the same as the login name?
in reply to siipale

Jonathan Lamothe
Jonathan Lamothe
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@siipale For current accounts, yes. I can't answer definitively for legacy ones. I've only been on SDF a couple years now.
@siipale

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