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finger(1L)

Who is on the system.

From the original Amiga UNIX 2.1 manual. Some things it mentions may not be in this release.

Also by this name: finger(1B), BSD versions of commands

Finger, Whois, - Who is on the system.

finger [-DIMPSTlmpw] [-i[hh:]mm] [*] [.] [username]

finger will display users that are currently on the system with some useful information. Examples of finger output are shown below:

NAME GROUP FULLNAME             WHAT  IDLE  TTY   LOCATION
jql  wheel John Q. Luser        emacs       tty02 window2


                                ksh   1     tty04 window4
root root  The root of all evil sh    15:26*tty01 window1
jrl  user  J. Random Luser      ksh   3:18  tty10 window10

In the above example:

User `jql' is logged on twice. One on tty02 running emacs with no idle time and also on tty04 at a korn shell prompt with a 1 minute idle time. User `jql' is group wheel and his real name is "John Q. Luser".

root is logged in on tty01 at a Bourne shell prompt with an idle time of 15 hours and 26 minutes. root's is not receiving messages (denoted by the asterisk by the tty name).

jrl (J. Random Luser) is logged in on tty10 at a ksh prompt with an idle time of 3 hours and 18 minutes.

whois displays users that are currently on the system with some in depth information about the users. Examples of whois output are shown below:

NAME GROUP FULLNAME      WHAT  IDLE TTY   LOCATION
jql  wheel John Q. Luser emacs      tty02 window2


                         ksh   9    tty04 window4
(Yo Man) </u/jql> Hacking finger and other system commands.
[100, 50] [/bin/ksh] Birthday June 14
Home 42 Aardvark Emporium; Phone 555-8537
Work Seal-On-A-Stick Inc;
[jql has had no mail since Sat Aug  6 16:17:36 1988]


    No comment.
root   root    The root of all evil sh     15:34*tty01 window1
(root-boy) </> Hacking your id into shreads for I am uid 0!
[0, 0] [/bin/sh]
[root has had no mail since Fri Aug  5 10:55:16 1988]
jrl    user    J. Random Luser      ksh    3:25  tty10 window10
(jrl) </u/jrl> Hacking Mah Jongg for the fun of it.
[99, 51] [/bin/ksh] Birthday January 11
Home 1010 Nowhere Ln; Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, USSR
Work is boring, so I'm never there.; 
[jrl has had no mail since Thu Jul 14 23:00:26 1988]
	I think I will go see what
	Christopher Robin is doing ...
		--Pooh

The format is obvious. I shall not explain it.

Output of finger can be formated by the following options:

This options is only valid on SCO Xenix systems. Finger (and whois) will not usually display a port that is used as a DIALOUT. This options will display DIALOUT lines if there are any currently are in use.
Sort by group name. -S is implicitly specified with this option. -H Force a header to appear even if output is not a tty.
Sort by idle time. From least to longest idle time. -S is implicitly specified with this option.
Force no display of mailbox info.
No sortted output.
Force no display of plan.
Show repeated user names on output.
Sort by tty. -S is implicitly specified with this option.
Don't display the what field.
Don't display the header.
Long output. Like whois without mailbox and plan info.
Display mailbox info if available.
Display plan if available.
Do a whois. Like doing a finger -lmp
Don't show users with idle times greater than `hh' hours and `mm' minutes. Deault is 30 minutes (:30).
*
Show all users in the data base.
Show username whether logged in or not.

~/.plan				The plan.
/usr/lib/finger/dbase/*		database information for whois.
/usr/lib/finger/nlist		nlist for quick access to the kernel.

bwiz(8l), ttyloc(1l), watson(1l)

Keith M. Gabryelski (ag@amix.commodore.com)