##### Context 1. Through a bug report and discussion about KDE Plasma's user management KConfig Module silently failing to support commas inside the full name field, I recently came to realise that parsing the GECOS field in /etc/passwd is a rather unstandardised endeavour, [\[2\]] for some applications support the comma-delimited values, [\[5\]] whereas others consider the entire content to be the user's full name. [\[3\]] 1. When I discussed this with the chfn developers at [github.com/util-linux/util-linux/discussions/3589#discussioncomment-13270218](https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/discussions/3589#discussioncomment-13270218:~:text=Maintainer-,POSIX%20defines%20the%20/etc/passwd%20format%2C%20but%20not%20the%20GECOS%20subfields%20and%20separators.,-The%20use%20of) , I was advised that this was the purview of POSIX: > POSIX defines the /etc/passwd format, but not the GECOS subfields and separators. 1. Consequently, I intended to file an ommission bug at The Austin Group MantisBT instance: [\[4\]] However, upon further research, POSIX.1 (The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 8) is too narrow, so I tried The Single UNIX Specification Version 4. Unfortunately, this explicitly states: [\[1\]] > One thing that becomes apparent working with the Single UNIX Specification is its focus on application development. The Single UNIX Specification is similar to the User's and Programmer's Reference Manuals on Berkeley or System V systems. > > Matters of system management are not part of this specification. Directory organization is not discussed beyond the simple few directories and devices that applications generally use. User management discussions do not appear. There is no discussion of such files as /etc/passwd or /etc/groups, since an application's access to the information traditionally kept in these files is through programmatic interfaces such as getpwnam() and getgrnam(). ##### Question Consequently, does *any* organisation exist, that I can petition to, to standardise the escape sequences of /etc/passwd's GECOS field, so that [those who use commas in their names](https://english.stackexchange.com/revisions/324077/2#content:~:text=Organization%20is%20better%20than%20randomness,ordered%20lists%20by%20last%20name.) can? [\[1\]]: https://unix.org/version4/overview.html#:~:text=One%20thing%20that%20becomes%20apparent,such%20as%20getpwnam()%20and%20getgrnam() . [\[2\]]: https://discuss.kde.org/t/why-does-the-users-kcm-prevent-adding-certain-characters-to-names/34772/3?u=rokejulianlockhart#post_3:~:text=If%20I%20understand%20correctly%2C%20the,defined%20in%20the%20first%20place . [\[3\]]: https://discuss.kde.org/t/why-does-the-users-kcm-prevent-adding-certain-characters-to-names/34772/3?u=rokejulianlockhart#post_3:~:text=the%20first%20place.-,There%E2%80%99s%20still%20some%20software%20out%20there%20that%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20recognize%20the%20GECOS%20subfields%20in%20the%20first%20place.%20That%20software%20treats%20commas%20as%20normal%20characters%2C%20confusing%20software%20that%20does%20recognize%20the%20subfields.,-1 [\[4\]]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unix/comments/cf21sh/comment/muj126e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button#:~:text=The%20SUS%20V4%20corresponds%20to,selext%20Issue%207%20+%20TC2 [\[5\]]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/revisions/541197/1#content:~:text=The%20de%20facto%20authoritative%20sources%20for%20this%20information%20are%20sendmail%20server%20and%20finger%20client%20implementations.%20Implementations%20for%20BSDs%20and%20Solaris%20are%20open%20source%2C%20and%20all%20of%20them%20would%20seem%20to%20agree%20on%20the%20above%20rules .

I'm trying to create my own

command in C in Linux Mint. Studying the real

command I've understood that the asterisk that the commands put when using the short output format left the tty is when one of the user has the write permission disabled, the permission used to send and receive messages between tty's I assume, that can be enabled with the

mesg y

command. The point of my question is, where does

gets the information about the write permissions of the tty? I've tryied looking into the utmp file but I can't find something relevant :( Also, if I disable the write permission on the tty connected with the GUI, why does the

command put the asterisk on the pts/0 entry, instead near my tty? like

matteo      tty7     2:40  Apr 29 16:10 (:0)
matteo      *pts/0         Apr 29 17:20

thanks in advance and sorry if I wrote something incorrectly, it's my first time going this deep in Linux :)

I've been playing around on my university's system and I noticed that sometimes the lists of logged in users I get from finger and pinky appear incomplete. For one thing, there were times when a friend sitting right next to me was logged in but I couldn't find them on the list. I checked to make sure and they were on the same exact computer (remote#) as me. Then there is the results of top. Sometimes it shows programs being run by users, but those users are nowhere to be found on the pinky list. Is there some exception where users can be logged in but not show up in pinky?

The Oracle packaged version of samba gave me some problems(error with krb5 and no join with AD samba4 server). So I recompile by myself using IPS the latest version of samba(4.3.13). After 30 minutes of compilation, my samba4 is installed. All works fine: net ads join OK, wbinfo OK, wbinfo -i user OK, all except two things: id winbinduser and finger winbinduser. I have resolved for id, with this dirty but working solution(would be better to put those files in manifest and standard location, but I want to avoid conflict with Oracle samba standard package). ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/nss_winbind.so.1 /usr/lib/amd64/nss_winbind.so.1 ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/nss_winbind.so.1 /usr/lib/nss_winbind.so.1 ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/security/pam_winbind.so /usr/lib/security/amd64/pam_winbind.so ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/security/pam_winbind.so /usr/lib/security/amd64/pam_winbind.so.1 ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/security/pam_winbind.so /usr/lib/security/pam_winbind.so ln -sf /opt/gm/lib/security/pam_winbind.so /usr/lib/security/pam_winbind.so.1 Id is working, but finger remain mute. What I miss? id pino uid=10005(pino) gid=10016(domain users) root@solaris11:~# finger !$ finger pino Login name: pino In real life: ??? This is the nsswitch.conf passwd: files winbind group: files winbind hosts: files dns wins ipnodes: files dns wins networks: files protocols: files rpc: files ethers: files netmasks: files bootparams: files publickey: files netgroup: ldap automount: files aliases: files services: files project: files auth_attr: files prof_attr: files tnrhtp: files tnrhdb: files sudoers: files This is the output of truss.

the finger man page says I need to use chmod to give the home directory the "other-users-execute bit set", in order to restrict finger requests to only those that original from the local host as a security measure,but I cant find that in the chmod man page, is this very straight forward or is there other material I need to cover to understand what is happening there?

without using finger command ,This command will display the login name, full name, home directory, and default shell for each of the names given on the command line. If one of the names is not found it should display an error message. If its is entered without any arguments, then the above information should be displayed for all the users logged in to the system at that time. But i don't know how to check if the name is on the system or not ! here's my script so far for (user name) :

read command 

if [ "$command" = " myfinger " ]
   echo myfinger name
   read name
   x=$( cat /etc/passwd | grep $userId  | cut -d: -f1  )
   y=$( cat /etc/passwd | grep $userId  | cut -d: -f5 | cut -d_ -f1 )
   z=$( cat /etc/passwd | grep $userId  | cut -d: -f6  )
   w=$( cat /etc/passwd | grep $userId  | cut -d: -f7  )

   echo login name : $x
   echo full name : $y
   echo home dir : $z
   echo shell : $w
  if ( "$name" != " cat /etc/passwd | grep $userId  | cut -d: -f5 | cut -d_ -f1 " )
     then 
echo  error : not found

  fi
 if ( "$name" = null )

     cat /etc/passwd  | cut -d: -f5 | cut -d_ -f1
fi
fi

I tried finger and find a Plan $ finger $USER Login: me Name: me Directory: /Users/me Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash On since Tue Nov 13 07:33 (CST) on console, idle 1 day 9:44 (messages off) On since Tue Nov 13 07:33 (CST) on ttys001 No Mail. No Plan. at the ending, there are No Mail and No Plan I know that Mail in /var/mail and there's a command `$ which mail /usr/bin/mail` How about Plan, where could I find it.

Sometimes, I use finger - and I can't help but notice that when I specify a user: finger admin - The last thing the output says is: No Plan. What does that mean? Where can I find out more about this - ?

I often use the return/status value of a command in scripts. I'm curious why the finger command doesn't have a return value. E.g., $ finger kevin Login: klang Name: Kevin Kang etc... Shell: /bin/bash No mail. No Plan. $ echo $? 0 $ finger blabla finger: blabla: no such user. $ echo $? 0 Tested under Ubuntu and RH. I guess I could do some string processing and look for the "no such user" response, but that seems cumbersome. The man page doesn't list *any* return values. --- Yes yes, it has a return value of zero, but that's not helpful if that's the *only* value it has - I didn't realize I had to actually spell that out.

If I have a .plan but finger doesn't show it, does that mean that something is wrong with my system? uname -a Linux share-02.csc.kth.se 4.4.0-83-generic #106-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 26 17:54:43 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux output of $ ls -dl ~ ~/.plan drwxr-xr-x 83 nik nogroup 10240 May 4 14:03 /home/n/i/nik lrwxr-xr-x 1 nik default 12 Nov 24 2015 /home/n/i/nik/.plan -> Public/.plan finger doesn't work even though I have a .plan: $ cat .plan The back-up plan. ######## ############## ################### ##################### ###################### ##### ####################### ########### ######################## ############### ######################## ################ ######################## ################### ######################## ##################### ######################## ###################### ####################### ####################### ###################### ######################## ################################# ######################## ################################## ######################### ########### ################# ################################### #### ############ ########################### ### # # ######## ######################## ### ## # ##### ###################### # # ###### ###################### # #### ###### #################### # ##### # # ###### ############## #### # # # # ####### ########## ##### # # # # ####### ###### ###### # # # ### # ####### ###### # ##### ###### # ####### ####### # ###### ###### ####### ######## # ##### ###### ### ## ####### ################ # ######## #### ######## # # ######## # ########## # ##### ## ## ########### ### # # # ########### # # # # ########## # # # # ## ######## # # # ## ###### # # # # # ## # # # #### # ## # ## ####### ### ## ######### ## ## # # #### # # ######## # # # # ###### ###### #### ############# ######## ################################ ######## ######################## ######## ########################## ######## ############################ ###### ################# ##### ############### ### ################ ### #### ### ### ######### # ###### ##### # ######### # ###### ###### # ######### # ###### ####### ########## # ###### ####### #### #### # #### ####### ######### # ### ###### ######## # #### ###### # ### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## # # # ### ## #### # ###### #################### ####### ######### ####### ######### ####### ######### ####### ######## ####### ####### ####### ####### ###### ####### ####### ####### # ################ ########## # ### ###### ########### ## ### ### ## ###### # #### ## ## ## ## #### # ##### ### ## ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## # # # # ## # ## # ## # ## ### ## # ############### ## ## ##### ## ######## Niklas Rosencrantz Styrmang 47 a 114 60 Stockholm Sweden +46 8 661 87 06 +46 70 753 26 37 ########################nik@share-02:~$ finger nik Login: nik Name: Niklas Rosencrantz Directory: /home/n/i/nik Shell: /bin/bash On since Thu Jul 6 20:16 (CEST) on pts/7 from 213.89.144.192 3 seconds idle No mail. No Plan. nik@share-02:~$

top/htop show userids. On our shared HPC, these are cryptic. I then need to manually do finger to figure out who the user is. Is there a way of getting top or htop to include this information right away? Thanks!

To quote from finger's man page >Mail status is shown as ``No Mail.'' if there is no mail at all, ``Mail last read DDD MMM ## HH:MM YYYY (TZ)'' if the person has looked at their mailbox since new mail arriving, or ``New mail received ...'', `` Unread since ...'' if they have new mail. I'd rather it didn't do that. In fact I'd like finger to only display no mail when asked. **Is there a way to ensure this behaviour?** I have no admin rights to the machine or the network (and Google points me to nail-biting remedies for some reason). Emptying the mail folder is one solution but I'm looking for something more elegant, if possible.