path: root/finger/finger.1

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.\"	from: @(#)finger.1	6.14 (Berkeley) 7/27/91
.\"	$Id: finger.1,v 1.18 2000/07/30 23:56:57 dholland Exp $
.\"
.Dd August 15, 1999
.Dt FINGER 1
.Os "Linux NetKit (0.17)"
.Sh NAME
.Nm finger
.Nd user information lookup program
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm finger
.Op Fl lmsp
.Op Ar user ...
.Op Ar user@host ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm finger
displays information about the system users.
.Pp
Options are:
.Bl -tag -width flag
.It Fl s
.Nm Finger
displays the user's login name, real name, terminal name and write
status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name if write permission is
denied), idle time, login time, office location and office phone
number.
.Pp
Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and minutes, unless
more than six months ago, in which case the year is displayed rather
than the hours and minutes.
.Pp
Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are
displayed as single asterisks.
.Pp
.It Fl l
Produces a multi-line format displaying all of the information
described for the
.Fl s
option as well as the user's home directory, home phone number, login
shell, mail status, and the contents of the files
.Dq Pa .plan ,
.Dq Pa .project ,
.Dq Pa .pgpkey
and
.Dq Pa .forward
from the user's home directory.
.Pp
Phone numbers specified as eleven digits are printed as ``+N-NNN-NNN-NNNN''.
Numbers specified as ten or seven digits are printed as the appropriate
subset of that string.
Numbers specified as five digits are printed as ``xN-NNNN''.
Numbers specified as four digits are printed as ``xNNNN''.
.Pp
If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase ``(messages off)''
is appended to the line containing the device name.
One entry per user is displayed with the
.Fl l
option; if a user is logged on multiple times, terminal information
is repeated once per login.
.Pp
Mail status is shown as ``No Mail.'' if there is no mail at all,
``Mail last read DDD MMM ## HH:MM YYYY (TZ)'' if the person has looked
at their mailbox since new mail arriving, or ``New mail received ...'',
``  Unread since ...'' if they have new mail.
.Pp
.It Fl p
Prevents
the
.Fl l
option of
.Nm finger
from displaying the contents of the
.Dq Pa .plan ,
.Dq Pa .project
and
.Dq Pa .pgpkey
files.
.It Fl m
Prevent matching of
.Ar user
names.
.Ar User
is usually a login name; however, matching will also be done on the
users' real names, unless the
.Fl m
option is supplied.
All name matching performed by
.Nm finger
is case insensitive.
.El
.Pp
If no options are specified,
.Nm finger
defaults to the
.Fl l
style output if operands are provided, otherwise to the
.Fl s
style.
Note that some fields may be missing, in either format, if information
is not available for them.
.Pp
If no arguments are specified,
.Nm finger
will print an entry for each user currently logged into the system.
.Pp
.Nm Finger
may be used to look up users on a remote machine.
The format is to specify a
.Ar user
as
.Dq Li user@host ,
or
.Dq Li @host ,
where the default output
format for the former is the
.Fl l
style, and the default output format for the latter is the
.Fl s
style.
The
.Fl l
option is the only option that may be passed to a remote machine.
.Pp
If standard output is a socket, 
.Nm finger
will emit a carriage return (^M) before every linefeed (^J). This is
for processing remote finger requests when invoked by
.Xr fingerd 8 .
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
.It Pa ~/.nofinger
If finger finds this file in a user's home directory, it will, for
finger requests originating outside the local host, firmly deny the
existence of that user.  For this to work, the finger program, as
started by
.Xr fingerd 8 ,
must be able to see the
.Pa .nofinger
file. This generally means that the home directory containing the file
must have the other-users-execute bit set (o+w). See
.Xr chmod 1 .
If you use this feature for privacy, please test it with ``finger
@localhost'' before relying on it, just in case.
.It ~/.plan
.It ~/.project
.It ~/.pgp
These files are printed as part of a long-format request. The
.Pa .project
file is limited to one line; the
.Pa .plan
file may be arbitrarily long.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chfn 1 ,
.Xr passwd 1 ,
.Xr w 1 ,
.Xr who 1
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm finger
command appeared in
.Bx 3.0 .