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finger(1)

NAME

     finger -- user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS

     finger [-46gklmpshoT] [user ...] [user@host ...]

DESCRIPTION

     The finger utility displays information about the system users.

     Options are:

     -4      Forces finger to use IPv4 addresses only.

     -6      Forces finger to use IPv6 addresses only.

     -s      Display the user's login name, real name, terminal name and write
	     status (as a ``*'' before the terminal name if write permission
	     is denied), idle time, login time, and either office location and
	     office phone number, or the remote host.  If -o is given, the
	     office location and office phone number is printed (the default).
	     If -h is given, the remote host is printed instead.

	     Idle time is in minutes if it is a single integer, hours and min-
	     utes if a ``:'' is present, or days if a ``d'' is present.  If it
	     is an ``*'', the login time indicates the time of last login.
	     Login time is displayed as the day name if less than 6 days, else
	     month, day; hours and minutes, unless more than six months ago,
	     in which case the year is displayed rather than the hours and
	     minutes.

	     Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are
	     displayed as single asterisks.

     -h      When used in conjunction with the -s option, the name of the
	     remote host is displayed instead of the office location and
	     office phone.

     -o      When used in conjunction with the -s option, the office location
	     and office phone information is displayed instead of the name of
	     the remote host.

     -g      This option restricts the gecos output to only the users' real
	     name.  It also has the side-effect of restricting the output of
	     the remote host when used in conjunction with the -h option.

     -k      Disable all use of utmp(5).

     -l      Produce a multi-line format displaying all of the information
	     described for the -s option as well as the user's home directory,
	     home phone number, login shell, mail status, and the contents of
	     the files .forward, .plan, .project and .pubkey from the user's
	     home directory.

	     If idle time is at least a minute and less than a day, it is pre-
	     sented in the form ``hh:mm''.  Idle times greater than a day are
	     presented as ``d day[s]hh:mm''.

	     One entry per user is displayed with the -l option; if a user is
	     logged on multiple times, terminal information is repeated once
	     per login.

	     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.

     -p      Prevent the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of
	     the .forward, .plan, .project and .pubkey files.

     -m      Prevent matching of user names.  User is usually a login name;
	     however, matching will also be done on the users' real names,
	     unless the -m option is supplied.	All name matching performed by
	     finger is case insensitive.

     -T      Disable the piggybacking of data on the initial connection
	     request.  This option is needed to finger hosts with a broken TCP
	     implementation.

     If no options are specified, finger defaults to the -l style output if
     operands are provided, otherwise to the -s style.	Note that some fields
     may be missing, in either format, if information is not available for
     them.

     If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry for each user
     currently logged into the system.

     The finger utility may be used to look up users on a remote machine.  The
     format is to specify a user as ``user@host'', or ``@host'', where the
     default output format for the former is the -l style, and the default
     output format for the latter is the -s style.  The -l option is the only
     option that may be passed to a remote machine.

     If the file .nofinger exists in the user's home directory, finger behaves
     as if the user in question does not exist.

     The optional finger.conf(5) configuration file can be used to specify
     aliases.  Since finger is invoked by fingerd(8), aliases will work for
     both local and network queries.

ENVIRONMENT

     The finger utility utilizes the following environment variable, if it
     exists:

     FINGER	 This variable may be set with favored options to finger.

FILES

     /etc/finger.conf  alias definition data base
     /var/log/lastlog  last login data base

SEE ALSO

     chpass(1), w(1), who(1), finger.conf(5), fingerd(8)

     D. Zimmerman, The Finger User Information Protocol, RFC 1288, December,
     1991.

     at large.)

     The finger utility does not recognize multibyte characters.

FreeBSD 5.4			 July 17, 2004			   FreeBSD 5.4

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