Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
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 per-
	       mission is denied), idle	time, login time,  and	either	office
	       location	and office 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  in-
	       stead.

	       Idle  time  is  in minutes if it	is a single integer, hours and
	       minutes if a ``:'' is present, or days if a ``d''  is  present.
	       If  it is an "*", the login time	indicates the time of last lo-
	       gin.  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 of-
	       fice phone.

       -o      When  used  in conjunction with the -s option, the office loca-
	       tion 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
	       described  for  the -s option as	well as	the user's home	direc-
	       tory, home phone	number,	login shell, mail status, and the con-
	       tents 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
	       presented 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 ``(mes-
	       sages 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 re-
	       peated 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 per-
	       son has looked at their mailbox since  new  mail	 arriving,  or
	       ``New  mail  received  ...'', ``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;
	       however,	 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	avail-
       able 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 pro-
       gram 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
       exists:

       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	13.2		       January 21, 2010			     FINGER(1)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | BUGS

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=finger&manpath=FreeBSD+14.0-RELEASE+and+Ports>

home | help