finger and who command usage

Question

I know that the finger command used to display information about local and remote users.

finger --> display users log in on local machine, even if remotely.

finger @hostname --> display users log in on the remote machine.

finger user@hostname --> I don't know what is it used for?

and who command used to know info about the local machine users only, is it true?

I am using Solaris 10 8/11

Answer 1

In general, in the *nix world, man <cmd> will give you the manual of the command in question. Anyway, to answer your question:

• finger : The finger displays information about the system users. This can include:

    the user's login name, real name, terminal
     name and write status (as a ``*'' after the terminal name
     if write permission is denied), idle time, login time,
     office location and office phone number.
  
     Login time is displayed as month, day, hours and minutes,
     unless more than six months ago, in which case the year is
     displayed rather than the hours and minutes.
  
     Unknown devices as well as nonexistent idle and login
     times are displayed as single asterisks.
  

• finger @hostname : print the list of users connected to the remote host hostname (source)

• finger user@hostname : get the details of the user user on the remote system hostname.