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FINGER(1)		     General Commands Manual		       FINGER(1)

NAME
     finger -- user information lookup program

SYNOPSIS
     finger [-46gklmpsho] [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 of-
	     fice 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 the user accounting database.

     -l      Produce  a  multi-line format displaying all of the information de-
	     scribed 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''.

	     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''.

	     If write permission is denied to the device, the phrase ``(messages
	     off)'' is appended to the line containing the device name.  One en-
	     try  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  re-
	     ceived ...'', ``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; 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.

     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, and the program
     is not run with superuser privileges, 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  ex-
     ists:

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

FILES
     /etc/finger.conf	     alias definition data base
     /var/log/utx.lastlogin  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.

HISTORY
     The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BUGS
     The finger utility does not recognize multibyte characters.

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly	January 21, 2010		       FINGER(1)

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