What is finger?
2 finger Examples
1. View detail about a particular user
finger command will display login, username, home directory, shell information about a particular user as shown below.
$ finger sathiya Login: sathiya Name: (null) Directory: /home/sathiya Shell: /bin/bash On since Mon Nov 1 18:45 (IST) on :0 (messages off) On since Mon Nov 1 18:46 (IST) on pts/0 from :0.0 New mail received Fri May 7 10:33 2010 (IST) Unread since Sat Jun 7 12:59 2008 (IST) No Plan.
2. View login details and Idle status about an user
You can use finger -s option to view the login detail for a particular user.
$ finger -s root Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone root root *1 19d Wed 17:45 root root *2 3d Fri 16:53 root root *3 Mon 20:20 root root *ta 2 Tue 15:43 root root *tb 2 Tue 15:44
Syntax and Options
|Short Option||Option Description|
|-s||Display the user’s login name, real name, terminal name and write status idle time, login time, and either
office location and office phone number, or the remote host.
|-p||Prevent the -l option of finger from displaying the contents of the .forward, .plan, .project and .pubkey
|-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.Display the user’s login name, real name, terminal name and write
status idle time, login time, and either office location and office phone number, or the remote host.
|-o||When used in conjunction with the -s option, the office location and office phone information is displayed
instead of the name of the remote host.