GFINGERD(8)

NAME
gfingerd - GNU finger server daemon

SYNOPSIS
/usr/pkg/sbin/gfingerd [options]

DESCRIPTION
Gfingerd is a daemon that runs permanently on a finger server host periodically polling its client hosts to keep the global finger databases up to date. It cooperates with two other daemons that are invoked on demand: in.cfingerd to reply to polls on the client hosts, and in.fingerd to read the databases and prepare formatted output on request by a user.

Gfingerd looks in the hostconfig(5) file for the server and lserver hostnames to verify that is is running on an appropriate host. It also scans client specifications in that file to set up its list of finger clients to poll.

In its first polling cycle, it will try to obtain a full dump of each clients lastlog database to initialize the global user database.

OPTIONS

-connect-timeout timeout
    Sets the time after which a polling connection attempt fails to timeout microseconds. The default is .75 seconds. A timeout of 0 specifies that the default of the underlying system be used. Hosts that cannot establish connection in the specified amount of time will be considered down.
-poll-timeout timeout
    Sets the time allowed for a read on the polling connection to return data, in microseconds. The default is 1.5 seconds, but may have to be increased considerably depending on the expected amount of data and the load on the client system. A timeout of 0 specifies waiting forever until data arrives.
-poll-interval interval
    Specifies the number of seconds the finger daemon will sleep between polling cycles. The default is 2 minutes. Note the maximum age of the polled data is given by this interval plus the time that the polling cycle itself takes.
-poll-debug
    Track the polling cycle with debugging output. For each client polled, its name and number of packets returned is logged.
-debug
    Full debugging output. In addition to the information printed by -poll-debug, this also prints the finger packets returned by each poll. Also, the daemon will not detach itself into the background, and connection timeouts are disabled. Error messages and debugging output is directed to stderr rather than the system log.

SIGNALS
SIGHUP
    Reread clients list and tty locations database (for local polling).
SIGUSR1
    Enable poll debugging.
SIGUSR2
    Disable poll debugging.
SIGINT, SIGTERM
    Graceful termination.

FILES
/var/spool/fingerdir//hostconfig
    Names of server and client hosts.
/var/spool/fingerdir//hostdata
    Host database of current logins.
/var/spool/fingerdir//userdata
    User database of most recent logins.
/var/spool/fingerdir//clientstatus
    Client info database.

SEE ALSO
gfinger(1), cfingerd(8), hostconfig(5), Emacs Info on finger.

BUGS
Databases not optimized for very large number of hosts/users.
Outdated finger packets from hosts that are down are not discarded if local and remote hostnames do not match.
Gateway polling is naive, will not prevent packets from circulating back to the originating server.