Finger User Information Protocol
The finger daemon runs on TCP port 79. The client will (in the case of remote hosts) open a connection to port 79. An RUIP (Remote User Information Program) is started on the remote end of the connection to process the request. The local host sends the RUIP one line query based upon the Finger query specification, and waits for the RUIP to respond. The RUIP receives and processes the query, returns an answer, then initiates the close of the connection. The local host receives the answer and the close signal, then proceeds closing its end of the connection.
The Finger user information protocol is based on RFC 1288 (The Finger User Information Protocol, December 1991). Typically the server side of the protocol is implemented by a program fingerd (for finger daemon), while the client side is implemented by the name and finger programs which are 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.
The program would supply information such as whether a user is currently logged-on, e-mail address, full name etc. As well as standard user information, finger displays the contents of the .project and .plan files in the user's home directory. Often this file (maintained by the user) contains either useful information about the user's current activities, similar to micro-blogging, or alternatively all manner of humor.
Read more about this topic: Finger Protocol
Famous quotes containing the words finger, user and/or information:
“But, alas, to make me
A fixèd figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“So while it is true that children are exposed to more information and a greater variety of experiences than were children of the past, it does not follow that they automatically become more sophisticated. We always know much more than we understand, and with the torrent of information to which young people are exposed, the gap between knowing and understanding, between experience and learning, has become even greater than it was in the past.”
—David Elkind (20th century)