Searching for People

Sometimes it's useful to know who is logged onto a machine, who has to a particular user name or what the username of a particular person is. For this we can usually use the finger command.

[pjh503@bhuna Linux]$ finger
Login     Name          Tty      Idle  Login Time  Office     Office
Phone
pjh503    Phil Hasnip  *:0             Oct 18 09:45
pjh503    Phil Hasnip   pts/1      40  Oct 18 09:45
pjh503    Phil Hasnip   pts/2      31  Oct 18 09:46
[pjh503@bhuna Linux]$ finger pjh503
Login: pjh503                           Name: Phil Hasnip
Directory: /home/pjh503                 Shell: /bin/bash
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on :0 (messages off)
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on pts/1   41 minutes 17 seconds idle
On since Wed Oct 18 09:46 (BST) on pts/2   31 minutes 30 seconds idle
[pjh503@bhuna Linux]$ finger Hasnip
Login: pjh503                           Name: Phil Hasnip
Directory: /home/pjh503                 Shell: /bin/bash
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on :0 (messages off)
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on pts/1   41 minutes 27 seconds idle
On since Wed Oct 18 09:46 (BST) on pts/2   31 minutes 40 seconds idle

We can get a little more information using finger -l

[pjh503@bhuna Linux]$ finger -l pjh503
Login: pjh503                           Name: Phil Hasnip
Directory: /home/pjh503                 Shell: /bin/bash
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on :0 (messages off)
On since Wed Oct 18 09:45 (BST) on pts/1   50 minutes 51 seconds idle
On since Wed Oct 18 09:46 (BST) on pts/2   41 minutes 4  seconds idle
No mail.
Project:
Density Functional calculations of transition metal oxides and
interfaces.
Plan:
To derive and implement improved methods of performing density
functional
calculations.

The last two parts are the user's `Project' and `Plan'. These are contained in the `.project' and `.plan' text files in the user's home directory.