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FINGER(1)               NetBSD General Commands Manual               FINGER(1)


NAME

     finger -- user information lookup program


SYNOPSIS

     finger [-8ghlmops] [user ...] [user@host ...]


DESCRIPTION

     The finger utility displays information about the system users.

     Options are:

     -8    Pass through 8-bit data.  This option is intended for enabling
           8-bit data output in the fingerd(8) service.  Using this from the
           command line is dangerous, as the output data may include control
           characters for your terminal.

     -g    This option restricts the gecos output to only the users' real
           names.

     -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.

     -l    Produces 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'' and ``.project'' 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''.

           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 speci-
           fied as five digits are printed as ``xN-NNNN''.  Numbers specified
           as four digits are printed as ``xNNNN''.

           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 -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.

     -m    Prevent matching of user names.  User is usually a login name; how-
           ever, 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.

     -o    When used in conjunction with the -s option, the office location
           and office phone information is displayed.  This is the default.

     -p    Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of
           the ``.forward'', ``.plan'' and ``.project'' files.

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

           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.  Login
           time is displayed as the dayname if less than six 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.

     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.


FILES

     /var/run/utmpx     The utmpx file.
     /var/log/lastlogx  The lastlogx file.
     /var/run/utmp      The utmp file.
     /var/log/lastlog   The lastlog file.


SEE ALSO

     chpass(1), w(1), who(1), fingerd(8)


HISTORY

     The finger command appeared in 2.0BSD:
           ftp://ftp.tuhs.org.ua/PDP-11/Distributions/ucb/2bsd.tar.gz

NetBSD 9.1                        May 7, 2020                       NetBSD 9.1