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Electronically Searching For A Specific Person

Dave Halsema

It is not uncommon for a computer user to need to locate a person they know over the computer. Often this user would like to know an e-mail address, phone number, or home address so that the person may be contacted. There are several tools that may be utilized to help you find that "elusive" someone, on both a local and a world-wide level.

LNAME

A "local-only" command to use if you're trying to find someone with an account on the ECN is called lname. I typed the lname command with my last name "lname Halsema" and was rewarded with my login, full name, department, and my computer maildrop. The computer maildrop is the machine where all of my e-mail resides.

% lname halsema
Login Name@Name@Department@Maildrop
halsema@Dave Halsema@ECN Account@harbor

FINGER

The most commonly used location tool is the standard UNIX command finger. The finger command can give you information such as: e- mail addresses, phone numbers, office locations, and whether the person whose account you are fingering is logged onto the computer.

The command format is "finger name@host". Where is the login id (or at some sites finger can also recognize the user's last name) and is the name of the machine where the user has an account. For example to finger my own ECN harbor account, type "finger halsema@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". The field for finger is optional and may be omitted. This will result in finger showing you everyone who is logged onto a particular machine. For example typing "finger @en.ecn.purdue.edu" will give you a list (most likely a long one) of all the people that are currently logged onto the computer en.

It is true that the finger command allows you to specify a host that is far away. However I categorized finger as "local" because it is often not much help when one tries to find someone with a computer account on an unknown machine. After all, if you don't know the hostname how can you finger their account?

WHOIS

The last two commands that I will discuss are helpful when trying to locate a person at the national level. These are whois and the Usenet User List. Whois is a white pages directory containing approximately 70,000 entries. The directory itself is maintained by the DDN Network Information Center (NIC). To use the whois command to look someone up, just type the command followed by the last name of the person you are looking for:

% whois Halsema
Halsema, Frank (FH95)  FRANKH@DURIN.SPARTA.COM
   Sparta Inc. AESO
   23041 de la Carlota Suite 400
   Laguna Hills, CA  92692
   (714) 768-8161

   Record last updated on 22-Feb-91.

Here I queried whois using my own last name. Very quickly I received back a response and it provided only one listing for Halsema. It seems I may have a distant relative living in California; hopefully he won't mind me using his name as an example.

The information whois provides is pretty straight forward; however, I would like to call attention to the name line. It shows last name, first name, handle (Frank's is FH95) and e-mail address shown above in all capital letters. The whois handle shown in parentheses following the name is useful when you query the server and receive a listing of names as in the next example.

% whois Loy   (returns the following among other things)
Loy, Doris (DL79)
Loy, Edwin W., Jr. (EWL2)
Loy, Gregory (GL112)
Loy, Joan L. (JLL9)
Loy, Randy (RL317)
Loy, Robert (RL59)
Loy, Robert (RL66)
Loy, Ursula (UML1)

As you can see, we found more than one Loy this time so it is necessary to use a handle to select one. Let's look up Randy. Notice that I type a backslash () followed by an exclamation point (!) and then the handle to single out the record. This is required when using the C shell. The backslash can be omitted but the explanation point is still required to identify a handle when using Bourne shell or Korn shell.

% whois \!RL317
Loy, Randy (RL317)  LOYR@INDPLS-ASAFM1.ARMY.MIL
   Defense Finance & Acctg Services-Indpls
   Headquarters Headquarters Company
   Stop 51
  Attn: DFAS-I-DXD
   Indianapolis, IN 46249-0170
   (COM) 317 542-2145 (DSN) 699-2145

   Record last updated on 01-Jun-92.

You may add your name to the national whois database by filling out a template file and mailing it to registrar@nic.ddn.mil. To get the template file use anonymous ftp and connect to nic.ddn.mil. The file you want to get is called user-template.txt and can be found in the directory netinfo.

This template file has instructions on filling out the form, a sample template, and a blank template for you to complete. Fill out the template using your favorite text editor. The instructions are easy to follow. This form is used not only for adding new users to the database but also for updating and deleting existing entries.

                            REMEMBER:
                            _________

Once you have placed information concerning yourself in this database, it is your responsibility to keep it current and up- to-date.

USENET USER LIST

Finally I would like to mention something known as the Usenet User List. This is a service provided by MIT and contains names and e-mail addresses of USENET posters from news group postings that pass through MIT. (This includes the majority of newsgroups that exist.) It works by recording the name and address it finds in the From: line that is present on a news post.

Access this service by e-mailing your address request to "mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu". Please note that the Subject: line is left blank, and the body of the e-mail message contains only the following: "send usenet-addresses/search-string". is the name of the person you want to locate and can only be one word without spaces. Let's try an example using my name and see what information we get back.

% mail mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
Subject:                   (do not type any text on this line)
send usenet-addresses/Halsema

A little while later you will receive some e-mail showing the results of your search:

% mail
Mail version SMI 4.0 Tue May 28 13:54:10 EST 1991
   Type ? for help.
"/usr/spool/mail/halsema": 1 message 1 unread
>U  1 mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu Thu Dec3 01:31
      34/1598  mail-server: "send usenet
& 1
Message  1:
>From daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU Thu Dec  3 01:31:40 1992

-----cut here-----
halsema@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Halsema)   (Nov 12 92)
halsema@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Halsema)   (May 11 92)
halsema@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Halsema)   (Nov 11 91)
lisa@argosy.UUCP (Lisa Van Halsema)   (Oct 2 91)
phalsema@x102a.ess.harris.com (halsema pb 64533)   (Dec 1 92)
frankh@durinlaguna.sparta.com (Frank Halsema)   (Oct 2 91)
phalsema@a102d.ess.harris.com (Paul Halsema)   (Oct 16 91)
-----cut here-----

& quit

You'll notice my name appears three times with three different accounts listed. It is usually to your advantage to try the address with the most recent posting. In my case, the most recent post that I've made was Nov. 12, 1992. Sending mail to this address listed above would reach me.

I sincerely hope you have gained some useful insights by reading this article. Please contact me if you have any questions/comments (good or bad) concerning the information in this article. Send me e-mail at halsema@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu. (But you could have figured that out yourself--right?)

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