HOSTCONFIG(5)

NAME
hostconfig - GNU finger host configuration file

DESCRIPTION
The file hostconfig in the GNU finger directory (fingerdir) contains information about various aspects of the setup of a collection of finger daemons. All information is organized as pairs of attribute keywords and associated values, one per line:
	keyword	value
keyword is the first word of non-whitespace characters on the line, whereas value is taken to be everything following, stripped of any leading and trailing whitespace. Keyword matching is case-insensitive. A pound sign (#) as the first non-whitespace character on the line marks the text following as a comment that is ignored. Empty lines are likewise ignored.

In cases where only one instance of an attribute value is meaningful only the first one is significant.

ATTRIBUTES
The following are all the keywords currently used by the various programs in the GNU finger system, with their associated semantics.

server
    value is the name of a host where finger requests that access global information (such as last logins) should be forwarded to. This host should run a gfingerd(8) daemon set up to globally gather finger information. This attribute has to be specified for proper operation of all finger programs.

lserver
    value is the name of host running a local finger daemon, polling a subset of hosts and possibly being polled by others as a gateway. This attribute is only required on the host in question and if different from server.

smtphost
    The value is a hostname or IP address pointing to a mail server machine running an SMTP server such as sendmail(8). It is used by in.fingerd(8) to check mail aliases. (If a user's username resolves to itself as per SMTP then it is assumed that the user's local mailbox can be checked for incoming messages.) An empty value field defaults to the local host. A missing smtphost suppresses mail alias lookup altogether.

domainname
    Overrides the local domain name that would be determined otherwise. In the absence of this attribute, finger tries to consult resolv.conf(5), gethostname(2) (if the hostname appears to be fully qualified) or getdomainname(2), in that order. The domain is used to normalize and/or strip local hostnames.

localnet
    This attribute can be used repeatedly to specify prefixes of IP numbers (e.g., 123.45.67.) that identify `local' hosts as far a finger is concerned. Local hosts have certain priviledges like special finger requests and may be replied to using different formats (see gfinger(1)). An empty value lets all hosts appear to be local. If the attribute is omitted, no machines are considered local (this may not be very useful as some functionality will be completely unavailable in this case).

denyhost
    This attribute directs in.fingerd to deny connections from certain hosts. Hosts can be specified either as hostnames, full IP numbers, domain suffixes (with a leading dot), or IP number prefixes (with a trailing dot). Note that hostnames or IP number are not interchangeable; rather, IP numbers are used only if the peer's address cannot be resolved to a hostname.

denyuser
    This attribute directs in.fingerd to deny connections from certain users. The user is given by its login name on the remote system. This feature is not reliable since it relies on support for the RFC 931 identification protocol; it may be useful to prevent access by certain information gathering services like netfind(1).

authenticate
    An attribute that specifies hosts or subdomains (in the manner of denyhost) for which in.fingerd should attempt to query the remote user name through the auth/ident protocol implemented by identd(8). In particular, specifying the attribute without a value enables remote user identification for all connections.

longoutput
    An attribute that specifies hosts or subdomains (in the manner of denyhost) for which in.fingerd should generate ``long'' output by default when indivdual users are fingered. Long output typically includes information about mail status, .project and .plan files, etc.

logconnect
    This attribute directs in.fingerd to log connections from certain hosts, along with the input lines given to the finger daemon. Hosts are specified as for denyhost.

allowindirect
    This attribute tells in.fingerd that a certain host or domain is allowed to perform `indirect' fingering through the local host, using multiple `@' characters in the finger target. This allows the local host to be a stepping stone for connections from other hosts to third party hosts, and maybe used to circumvent access restrictions. The rules for hostname specification are as for denyhost; specifying "localnet" tells finger to allow indirect fingering for all `local' connections (as per localnet).

acctfile
    The value is the name of a file from which finger tries to glean the name of the last command run by a user. By default this is the standard system accounting file, unless the functionality has been disabled entirely at compile time. An empty value disables accounting file lookups.

printwidths
    This sets a global default for the -widths option to gfinger(1). The value of this attribute must conform to the same syntax as the option argument.

defaultlocal, defaultremote
    Specifies a default target (special finger or user name) to use if none was passed by the finger client, for local and remote connections, respectively. This defaults to .all in both cases, but some sites may prefer to set defaultlocal to .local, or defaultremote to .site, etc.

defaultself
    The default target for connections from "localhost" (the loopback interface), which are typically those from the gfinger(1) front-end. This overrides both defaultlocal and defaultremote, and can be used to have "gfinger" return a format different from "gfinger @host".

client
    value specifies a client host for polling by gfingerd(8). The specification may take on several forms.

    hostname
        The named host is polled for its local logins.

    IP-address
        The host with the given IP address is polled for its local logins.

    :local
        The finger daemon polls the local host internally (without establishing a connection with in.cfingerd).

    :local host
        The finger daemon polls the specified host's login records internally through the file system. (This is currently only supported in HP-UX clustered environments.) host can be either a hostname or an IP address.

    :gateway host
        The host is assumed to be running another finger daemon and polled for all login records in that daemon's database. This allows a hierarchical (or mutual) multi-level polling scheme to be set up (cf. the lserver attibute above). host can be either a hostname of IP address.

    :alias alias host
        The host (either hostname or IP address) is polled, but packets returned from it are assumed to contain the name alias. This is useful if a client is accessed under a secondary name or address. Not using this feature in such a case is not critical, however old finger packets will not be removed when the host is down.

Attributes that perform hostname or IP number matching also allow entries to be `negated.' An entry starting with a `!' is matched as usual (without the leading character) and produces a negative result if successful, thus preventing following entries from matching. For example

logconnect	!.Berkeley.EDU
logconnect

would log all connections from outside the Berkeley.EDU domain.

FILES
/var/spool/fingerdir//hostconfig

SEE ALSO
gfinger(1), gfingerd(8), cfingerd(8), identd(8).