in.fingerd man page on SuSE

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FINGERD(8)		  BSD System Manager's Manual		    FINGERD(8)

NAME
     in.fingerd — remote user information server

SYNOPSIS
     in.fingerd [-lMmpSsu] [-P filename]

DESCRIPTION
     in.fingerd is a simple protocol based on RFC 1288 that provides an inter‐
     face to the Name and Finger programs at several network sites.  The pro‐
     gram is supposed to return a friendly, human-oriented status report on
     either the system at the moment or a particular person in depth.  There
     is no required format and the protocol consists mostly of specifying a
     single “command line”.

     in.fingerd is started by inetd(8), which listens for TCP requests at port
     79.  Once connected it reads a single command line terminated by a ⟨CRLF⟩
     which is passed to finger(1).  in.fingerd closes its connections as soon
     as the output is finished.

     If the line is null (i.e., just a ⟨CRLF⟩ is sent) then finger(1) returns
     a “default” report that lists all people logged into the system at that
     moment.

     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 deriva‐
     tions are returned.

     The following options may be passed to in.fingerd as server program argu‐
     ments in /etc/inetd.conf:

     -l	     Enable logging.  The name of the host originating the query and
	     the actual request is reported via syslog(3) at LOG_NOTICE prior‐
	     ity.  A request of the form ‘/W’ or ‘/w’ will return long output.
	     Empty requests will return all currently logged in users.	All
	     other requests look for specific users.  See RFC 1288 for
	     details.

     -M	     Enables matching of user names.  This is disabled by default if
	     the system is running YP.

     -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.

     -P filename
	     Use an alternate program as the local information provider.  The
	     default local program executed by in.fingerd is finger(1).	 By
	     specifying a customized local server, this option allows a system
	     manager to have more control over what information is provided to
	     remote sites.

     -p	     Prevents finger(1) from displaying the contents of the “.plan”
	     and “.project” files.

     -S	     Prints user information in short mode, one line per user.	This
	     overrides the “Whois switch” that may be passed in from the
	     remote client.

     -s	     Enable secure mode.  Forwarding of queries to other remote hosts
	     is denied.

     -u	     Queries without a user name are rejected.

SEE ALSO
     finger(1), inetd(8), xinetd(8)

HISTORY
     The in.fingerd command appeared in 4.3BSD.

BUGS
     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.  in.fingerd should be taught to filter out IAC's and per‐
     haps even respond negatively (IAC WON'T) to all option commands received.

BSD				 June 4, 1993				   BSD
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