Finger Gateways

Finger allows you either to find information about a person based on his or her email address, or to see a list of people currently logged onto a particular host computer. The actual information returned by the command depends on the how the host has been configured to respond (in some cases, computers are deliberately configured to ignore finger commands from other computers).

An easy way to use this tool is to use your browser to access a Finger Gateway such as

http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/cgi-bin/finger.pl

This invokes a finger program running on the computer www.nova.edu, and returns the information gathered by that program to your browser.

Fingering a Computer System

Suppose we wanted see who is currently using the computer with IP address utkux1.utcc.utk.edu. Accessing the preceding finger gateway gives a dialog window in which we enter the IP address preceded by an @ symbol:

After we submit the inquiry (by pressing "Return" or "Enter", or by selecting the "Search" button), finger returns the following sort of information concerning the present users of the system (the output has been truncated to save space): 

Finger Lookup

[UTKUX1.UTK.EDU] 
Login       Name               TTY       Idle    When    Where
cpaul    Carrie Paul           pts/0          Fri 23:28  ppp-206-170-4-219.wn
operator operations            console     1d Tue 07:32 
opeterso J. Owen Peterson      pts/1          Fri 22:28  TCHM09A3.RMT.UTK.EDU
harp     Sean Alan Harp       *pts/58    5:48 Fri 08:23  MOTHRA.CAS.UTK.EDU  
hank     Hank Pike             pts/45    6:02 Fri 16:10  DUKE.CAS.UTK.EDU    
melendez Maria F Melendez     *pts/2          Fri 23:11  TXSM06.NS.UTK.EDU   
pauly    Paul F Lavin          pts/15         Fri 22:23  TXSM04.NS.UTK.EDU   
adoshi   ADDOSHI              *pts/7       5d Sun 13:05  TXSM05.NS.UTK.EDU   
awatson  Amber Elizabeth Wats *pts/17         Fri 22:47  TCHM03A4.RMT.UTK.EDU
mincher  n                     pts/6          Fri 23:14  TXSM05.NS.UTK.EDU   
lyons    Curtis Lyons         *pts/9       3d Tue 15:45  AZTEC.LIB.UTK.EDU   

                     (--- Further Output Truncated ---)

Fingering Individuals

We can also finger individual users through their email addresses: entering "kabacoff@cps.nova.edu" gives 

Finger Lookup

[cps.acast.nova.edu] 
Login       Name           TTY   Idle  When  Where
kabacoff Robert Kabacoff  pts/6           ppp105.acast.nov

Which tells us the full name of the user "kabacoff", that he is presently logged onto the system we have fingered, and that he seems to be logged into cps.nova.edu through a remote connection called ppp105.acast.nov (probably a PPP modem connection). On some systems, such a finger of an individual might give much more information. For example, submitting "daniels@einstein.drexel.edu" to the finger gateway gives 

Finger Lookup

[einstein.physics.drexel.edu] 
Login name: daniels        In real life: Vince Daniels
Directory: /home/einstein0/daniels   Shell: /bin/tcsh
On since Aug 15 10:49:22 on ttyp3 from beowulf.physics.
1 day 13 hours Idle Time
Unread mail since Fri Aug 16 23:48:41 1996
Plan:
To be home in time for dinner.

which gives information as detailed as whether the user has any unread email on this system, and a "Plan" (whether for life, or just for this day, finger cannot say).

Finger May be Blocked for Some Systems

On many systems finger is either completely or partially blocked by the system administrator because of privacy and security concerns. For example, suppose you have sent the President some email but he hasn't responded. Encouraged by the preceding example, you decide to see if the President is logged on and if he has any unread email, so you go to the finger interface and enter "president@whitehouse.gov". Unfortunately for the cause of grassroots political communication, in this case you will either get no response, or a message that says 

[whitehouse.gov]

Finger service for arbitrary addresses on whitehouse.gov 
is not supported. If you wish to send electronic mail, 
valid addresses are "PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV", and 
"VICE-PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV".

Now Try it Yourself

Try the finger gateway for yourself. (But be sure to return to this page to continue the Tutorial!) As a start, you can try repeating some of the examples shown above, and if you have some email addresses of friends you can try fingering them too. However, remember that many systems will not allow a finger access from an external computer, so your attempts to finger people may not all be successful.

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