FINGERD -- A safer and more configurable version of this infamous daemon

FINGER was first invented by Les Earnest at SAIL.

	https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/

"1972 Social networking and blogging service (FINGER) was initially just
for SAIL but became a network service in 1975, "


This is a much updated version of Mike Shanzer's fingerd-1.3.

This is a re-written, more secure, and more functional version of the
traditional fingerd.

So, just what does this fingerd have to offer?

	- it has much enhanced logging.

	- it supports access control lists (ACLs):  you can restrict
	  finger requests to certain hosts (and certain users within
	  trusted networks if you trust your identd, aka RFC-1413 nee
	  RFC-931).

	- does not forward requests by default (in accordance with the
	  recommendations of RFC 1288)

	- has other command-line and ACL control options to optionally
	  implement further recommendations of RFC 1288, such as one to
	  completely disable user name matching, one to prevent sending
	  of user lists (i.e. listing all currently logged in users),
	  another to turn off sending of ~/.plan files, and finally one
	  to prevent sending of GECOS (office and telephone number
	  sub-fields) and/or home directory.

	- it sports a "message of the day" file for sending host-wide
	  announcements, disclaimers, etc.

	- it can execute programs when finger requests for specified
	  users are received and will return the output of such programs
	  to the remote user.

	- except for the last mentioned feature it should be secure.  It
	  normally should be run as an unprivileged user and it does not
	  need to own any files, etc.; needing only access to its own
	  (optional) configuration files.

	- even with all of this it should be much simpler to configure
	  and use than most any of the other so-called "enhanced"
	  versions of fingerd -- it's certainly smaller and simpler,
	  code-wise, than some of them!


TO BUILD FINGERD

This release of fingerd was primarily done as an example of packaging a
portable program with a BSD Make Makefile and additional helper Makefile
fragments for stand-alone builds.

In general you need only run the following to build and install:

	mkdir -p build; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd)/build bsdmake
	MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd)/build bsdmake DESTDIR=/usr/local install

(This assumes you are using a BSD "make", which you must.  Just do it!)


FOR MORE INFORMATION

If you have any troubles, questions, or feature requests, for fingerd
you can send mail to <bugs@robohack.planix.com>, or open an issue on
GitHub.

The lastest version of this software is available at:

	<URL:https://github.com/robohack/fingerd>
	<URL:ftp://ftp.planix.com/pub/Planix/fingerd.tar.gz>
	<URL:http://www.planix.com/ftp/pub/Planix/fingerd.tar.gz>

-- 
						Greg A. Woods
						<woods-fingerd@planix.ca>