fingerd(1M)

DESCRIPTION

fingerd is the server for the RFC 742 Name/Finger protocol. It provides a network interface to finger, which gives a status report of users currently logged in on the system or a detailed report about a specific user (see finger(1)). The Internet daemon executes fingerd when it receives a service request at the port listed in the services data base for ``finger'' using ``tcp'' protocol; see inetd(1M) and services(4).

To start fingerd from inetd, the configuration file /etc/inetd.conf must contain an entry as follows:

Once a remote host is connected, fingerd reads a single ``command line'' terminated by a carriage-return and line-feed. It uses this command line as the arguments to an invocation of finger. fingerd sends the output of finger to the remote host and closes the connection.

If the command line is null (contains only a carriage-return and line-feed pair), finger returns a report that lists all users logged in on the system at that moment.

If a user name is specified on the command line (for example, user<CR><LF>), the response lists more extended information for only that particular user, whether logged in or not. See finger(1) for the details of this extended information.

If fingerd is run with the -r option, it allows remote user names on the command line (for example, user@host<CR><LF>). Otherwise, if the command line contains a remote user name, fingerd prints the error message Remote finger not allowed and closes the connection.

AUTHOR

fingerd was developed by the University of California, Berkeley and HP.

SEE ALSO

finger(1), inetd(1M), services(4),

RFC 742 for the Name/Finger protocol.