Provided by: fingerd_0.17-15.1_amd64 
NAME
in.fingerd — remote user information server
SYNOPSIS
in.fingerd [-wulf] [-pL path] [-t timeout]
DESCRIPTION
Fingerd is a simple daemon based on RFC1196 that provides an interface to the “finger” program at most
network sites. The program is supposed to return a friendly, human-oriented status report on either the
system at the moment or a particular person in depth.
If the -w option is given, remote users will get an additional “Welcome to ...” banner which also shows
some informations (e.g. uptime, operating system name and release) about the system the in.fingerd is
running on. Some sites may consider this a security risk as it gives out information that may be useful to
crackers.
If the -u option is given, requests of the form “finger @host” are rejected.
If the -l option is given, information about requests made is logged. This option probably violates users'
privacy and should not be used on multiuser boxes.
If the -f option is given, finger forwarding (user@host1@host2) is allowed. Useful behind firewalls, but
probably not wise for security and resource reasons.
The -p option allows specification of an alternate location for in.fingerd to find the “finger” program.
The -L option is equivalent.
The -t option specifies the time to wait for a request before closing the connection. A value of 0 waits
forever. The default is 60 seconds.
Options to in.fingerd should be specified in /etc/inetd.conf.
The finger protocol consists mostly of specifying command arguments. The inetd(8) “super-server” runs
in.fingerd for TCP requests received on port 79. Once connected in.fingerd reads a single command line
terminated by a ⟨CRLF⟩ which is passed to finger(1). It closes its connections as soon as all output is
finished.
If the line is empty (i.e. just a ⟨CRLF⟩ is sent) then finger returns a “default” report that lists all
people logged into the system at that moment. This feature is blocked by the -u option.
If a user name is specified (e.g. eric⟨CRLF⟩) then the response lists more extended information for only
that particular user, whether logged in or not. Allowable “names” in the command line include both “login
names” and “user names”. If a name is ambiguous, all possible derivations are returned.
SEE ALSO
finger(1), inetd(8)
RESTRICTIONS
Connecting directly to the server from a TIP or an equally narrow-minded TELNET-protocol user program can
result in meaningless attempts at option negotiation being sent to the server, which will foul up the
command line interpretation.
HISTORY
The finger daemon appeared in 4.3BSD.