1FINGERD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual FINGERD(8)
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4 fingerd — remote user information server
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7 fingerd [-wulf] [-pL path] [-t timeout]
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10 Fingerd is a simple daemon based on RFC1196 that provides an interface to
11 the “finger” program at most network sites. The program is supposed to
12 return a friendly, human-oriented status report on either the system at
13 the moment or a particular person in depth.
14 If the -w option is given, remote users will get an additional “Welcome
16 to ...” banner which also shows some informations (e.g. uptime, operating
17 system name and release) about the system the fingerd is running on. Some
18 sites may consider this a security risk as it gives out information that
19 may be useful to crackers.
20 If the -u option is given, requests of the form “finger @host” are
22 rejected.
23 If the -l option is given, information about requests made is logged.
25 This option probably violates users' privacy and should not be used on
26 multiuser boxes.
27 If the -f option is given, finger forwarding (user@host1@host2) is
29 allowed. Useful behind firewalls, but probably not wise for security and
30 resource reasons.
31 The -p option allows specification of an alternate location for fingerd
33 to find the “finger” program. The -L option is equivalent.
34 The -t option specifies the time to wait for a request before closing the
36 connection. A value of 0 waits forever. The default is 60 seconds.
37 Options to fingerd should be specified in /etc/xinetd.d/finger.
39 The finger protocol consists mostly of specifying command arguments. The
41 xinetd(8) “super-server” runs fingerd for TCP requests received on port
42 79. Once connected fingerd reads a single command line terminated by a
43 ⟨CRLF⟩ which is passed to finger(1). It closes its connections as soon
44 as all output is finished.
45 If the line is empty (i.e. just a ⟨CRLF⟩ is sent) then finger returns a
47 “default” report that lists all people logged into the system at that
48 moment. This feature is blocked by the -u option.
49 If a user name is specified (e.g. eric⟨CRLF⟩) then the response lists
51 more extended information for only that particular user, whether logged
52 in or not. Allowable “names” in the command line include both “login
53 names” and “user names”. If a name is ambiguous, all possible deriva‐
54 tions are returned.
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57 finger(1), xinetd(8)
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60 Connecting directly to the server from a TIP or an equally narrow-minded
61 TELNET-protocol user program can result in meaningless attempts at option
62 negotiation being sent to the server, which will foul up the command line
63 interpretation.
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66 The finger daemon appeared in 4.3BSD.
67Linux NetKit (0.17) August 29, 1996 Linux NetKit (0.17)