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Finger Command

The Linux finger command allows users to look up information about other system users. It displays details like login name, real name, idle time, login time, home directory location, and more. The finger command has various options to customize the output, including -l for long format, -s for short format showing month and day instead of hours and minutes, and -p to exclude contents of certain files from output. Examples show how to use finger to lookup information about a specific user.

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32 views

Finger Command

The Linux finger command allows users to look up information about other system users. It displays details like login name, real name, idle time, login time, home directory location, and more. The finger command has various options to customize the output, including -l for long format, -s for short format showing month and day instead of hours and minutes, and -p to exclude contents of certain files from output. Examples show how to use finger to lookup information about a specific user.

Uploaded by

Darko
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Linux finger command

Updated: 12/29/2017 by Computer Hope

• About finger
• finger syntax
• finger examples
• Related commands
• Linux and Unix commands help

About finger
finger looks up and displays information about system users.

finger syntax
finger [-lmsp] [user ...] [user@host ...]

Options
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.
-s
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.

Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login times are displayed as single asterisks.
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 ".plan", ".project", ".pgpkey" and ".forward" from the user's home directory.

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".
-l
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.
Prevents the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of the ".plan", ".project" and
-p
".pgpkey" files.
Prevent matching of usernames. The user is usually a login name; however, matching will also be
-m done on the users' real names, unless the -m option is supplied. All name matching performed by
finger is case insensitive.
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.
Finger 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 standard output is a socket, finger will emit a carriage return (^M) before every linefeed (^J). This
format is for processing remote finger requests when invoked by fingerd, the finger daemon.

Files
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
~/.nofing program, as started by fingerd, must be able to see the .nofinger file. This generally means
er that the home directory containing the file must have the other-users-execute bit set (o+x).
(See chmod). If you use this feature for privacy, please test it with "finger @localhost"
before relying on it, just in case.
~/.plan These files are printed as part of a long-format request. The .plan file may be of any length.

~/.projec
t
~/.pgpke
y

finger Examples
finger -p ch

Display information about the user ch. Output will appear similar to the following:
Login name: admin
In real life: Computer Hope
On since Feb 11 23:37:16 on pts/7 from domain.computerhope.com
28 seconds Idle Time
Unread mail since Mon Feb 12 00:22:52 2001

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