fingerd(8)

NAME
fingerd - extensible finger daemon

SYNOPSIS
fingerd

DESCRIPTION
fingerd, a replacement for the standard finger daemon written in perl, is designed in several parts to make it easy to write scripts that take effect when certain users are fingered. When a user gets a finger request, fingerd checks to see if /usr/lib/finger/$user exists Iff it does, it executes that with perl as an interpreter. Otherwise, it executes the script /usr/lib/finger/default with $user as a command line argument. If it receives a null finger, which is, as defined in the RFC, the signal to list all logged-in users, it simply ignores it because I consider letting anyone on the Internet know your logins is a security hole.

It should be pretty easy to edit the default script to your liking. As it is, it's a rough copy of standard finger behaviour. It will display full name, shell, home directory, .plan, .project, and .pgpkey. I have also included one rather pointless custom script, /usr/lib/finger/random. It simply comes up with a random number and spits it out with a few words of explanation.

fingerd should be called from inetd and run as user nobody. WARNING: running fingerd as root is a major security hole; it lets anyone look at any file on the system.

ENVIRONMENT
No environment variables used.

FILES
/usr/lib/finger/default

AUTHOR
Jonathan Westhues

SEE ALSO
in.fingerd(8), in.cfingerd(8), finger(1)

BUGS
None found; if you find any or have any comments mail me at jwesthue@genie.kw-net.com.