Columbia MM
MM Manual

CHECKING USER IDS AND ADDRESSES

There are several commands in MM that give you information about other users. You can locate a userid, in order to address mail, and find out some other information about other users. You may also have access to other campus directory listings, not part of MM.


LOCATING OR VERIFYING USER IDS: FINGER

The MM command finger can be used in several ways. It is the same as the UNIX shell command finger and, like many shell commands, takes a variety of options indicated by use of a minus sign and one or more letters. For full information, see the manual page, by typing man finger at the shell prompt, or !man finger at an MM prompt.

One option is finger -m with a name. This searches for both real names and user ids. Use * for truncation.



MM>finger -m bren*


To verify a user id before mailing to it, use finger by itself followed by the exact user id. The result will show information about the user id, including the name, so you can determine whether it is the person you want. The option -v will show more information.



MM>finger jb51
jb51     Joseph Brennan       Last login Aug  1 15:27 from ttyu2 (128.59.33.45)
No new mail.
MM>




MM>finger -v jb51
Login name: jb51                        In real life: Joseph Brennan
Office: 612 W 115 S
Directory: /f/u1/d09200/jb51            Shell: /bin/ksh
Last login Wed Aug  1 15:27 on ttyu2
No new mail.
Plan:
MM>


You can finger user ids at many other Internet hosts, though not all. Type finger and the domain address. The result may look like one of the above examples or may vary, depending on how the remote host does its finger command. Sometimes you will get a response like unrecognized TCP host, which just means you can't finger to that site.



MM>finger abc@bigvax.trans.edu
[bigvax.trans.edu]
Login name: abc                         In real life: Anselm B Cooper
Office: 125 West Hall, 1-201-555-5555
Directory: /u3/abc                      Shell: /bin/tcsh
Last login Tue Aug  7 13:07 on ttyd6
Plan:



TESTING AN ADDRESS: WHO

If you want to see where the local mail system will send mail, use the who command in MM. The command takes into account any mail aliases or forwarding that may be in effect and shows you where the mail will go, similar to the list you see after giving a send command at the S> prompt. In the first example below, the mail just simply goes to the address given; the second and third cases show what happens if there is mail forwarding or a mail alias in effect, since the address shown is somewhere else. If the address points to a mailing list, the whole list will be shown. In the last case, user jb51 has tried a nonexistent address, and sees his own address shown, meaning mail to that address would be returned to him.



MM>who mm33
mm33
MM>who abc6
xyz4
MM>who consultant
dcl@blackbox.cc.columbia.edu
MM>who foobar
foobar... User unknown
jb51
MM>



GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER USERS

Typing the finger command without a userid or name will show everyone logged in right now. The list can be very long, so you should pipe to more, that is, type finger | more.

The MM finger command is defined by the variable finger-command. You can, if you desire, redefine it to be some other command. Type set finger-command followed by the command desired. For example, you could make MM finger be the same as finger -m, so when you type finger joe in MM, it will do finger -m joe. If you change the command, use the save-init command to save the change.


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