A finger server is a daemon that answers finger protocol queries (port 79), returning a user's .plan and .project files to anyone who asks. Running one makes your .plan reachable from outside the machine.

tilde.town and tilde.pink both run a finger daemon: no setup needed. Your ~/.plan is served automatically:

finger you@tilde.town
finger you@tilde.pink

fingerd (classic, OpenBSD/NetBSD standard) or finger2000 for modern Linux.

Minimal setup with fingerd (inetd-based):

sudo apt install fingerd
# add to /etc/inetd.conf:
# finger stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.fingerd
sudo service inetd restart

Verify:

finger youruser@localhost

• ~/.plan: what you're working on (free-form text)
• ~/.project: one-line current project description
• Login name, real name (from chfn), last login time

See .plan and .project for what to write.

• .plan and .project
• Finger Protocol
• tilde.town
• tilde.pink
• Return to protocols