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Searching ECN for People Information

Each person with an account on the Engineering Computer Network has a skeleton of information placed online when their account is created. You can access this data by using the finger command (f). When you type "f login", where the word "login" is replaced by your login name, you will see what the computer knows about you, including a uid number (Uid: ####). Your login and uid are unique throughout the ECN, not just unique to your machine; therefore, if you have accounts on more than one machine (ie, ca & cb) you should have the same login name/uid number on each machine.

Finger will also provide general information on other systems users. Fingering people on your machine is simple with "f login". However if you have a friend who has an account on a machine different than yours, when you type "f login" there will be no information available because finger only checks your machine unless instructed to look elsewhere. To determine what machine your friend has an account on, you may type "lname login" or "lname lastname". The lname command will check for that login or real name on ALL of the ECN machines and report back to you on which machines that person/login has an ECN account. (See "help lname".) Type "f login@machine" to read the finger information (ie, f clarkst@ca).

One nice feature of the finger command (f) is that it shows when mail was last read. For example, let us assume your friend's login is "friend" and after you have sent mail to this person, you could use finger on your friend's mail site machine (ie, machine XX) to verify your important mail has been noticed! To accomplish this type "f friend@XX". Sometimes people have multiple accounts on various ECN machines. To find out the mail site (ie, which machine their mail goes to) type "mailbox -u friend" (For more information see "help mailbox".)

One word of caution, the finger command will often show a field that has a telephone number. Most people do not update their account information even though this is easy to do using the "chfn" command. (See "help chfn".) A more reliable way to obtain a phone number is to type "phone lastname". The phone command accesses a phone directory of students and staff on campus.

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