freebsd man page for fingerd

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

NAME
     fingerd -- remote user information server

SYNOPSIS
     fingerd [-d] [-k] [-s] [-l] [-p filename]

DESCRIPTION
     The fingerd utility uses a simple protocol based on RFC1196 that provides an interface to finger(1) at several network sites.  It 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'', thus, fingerd can also be used to implement other protocols
     in conjunction with the -p flag.

     The fingerd utility is started by inetd(8), which listens for TCP requests at port 79.  Once connected it reads a single command line termi-
     nated by a <CRLF> which is passed to finger(1).  The fingerd utility 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 pos-
     sible derivations are returned.

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

     -d      Enable debugging mode.  In debugging mode, fingerd will not attempt any network-related operations on stdin, and it will print the
	     full finger command line to stderr before executing it.

     -k      Suppress login information.  See the description of the -k option in finger(1) for details.

     -s      Enable secure mode.  Queries without a user name are rejected and forwarding of queries to other remote hosts is denied.

     -l      Enable logging.  The name of the host originating the query is reported via syslog(3) at LOG_NOTICE priority.

     -p      Use an alternate program as the local information provider.  The default local program executed by fingerd is finger(1).  By specify-
	     ing a customized local server, this option allows a system manager to have more control over what information is provided to remote
	     sites.  If -p is specified, fingerd will also set the environment variable FINGERD_REMOTE_HOST to the name of the host making the
	     request.

SEE ALSO
     finger(1), inetd(8)

HISTORY
     The fingerd utility appeared in 4.3BSD.

BSD
								 November 19, 2014							       BSD