rwhod(1M) (TCP/IP) rwhod(1M)
NAME
rwhod, in.rwhod - system status server
SYNOPSIS
in.rwhod
DESCRIPTION
rwhod is the server which maintains the database used by the rwho(1)
and ruptime(1) programs. Its operation is predicated on the ability
to broadcast messages on a network.
rwhod operates as both a producer and consumer of status information.
As a producer of information it periodically queries the state of the
system and constructs status messages which are broadcast on a
network. As a consumer of information, it listens for other rwhod
servers' status messages, validating them, then recording them in a
collection of files located in the directory /var/spool/rwho.
The rwho server transmits and receives messages at the port indicated
in the rwho service specification, see services(4). The messages
sent and received, are of the form:
struct outmp {
char outline[8]; /* tty name */
char outname[8]; /* user id */
long outtime; /* time on */
};
struct whod {
char wdvers;
char wdtype;
char wdfill[2];
int wdsendtime;
int wdrecvtime;
char wdhostname[32];
int wdloadav[3];
int wdboottime;
struct whoent {
struct outmp weutmp;
int weidle;
} wdwe[1024 / sizeof (struct whoent)];
};
All fields are converted to network byte order prior to transmission.
The load averages are as calculated by the w(1) program, and
represent load averages over the 5, 10, and 15 minute intervals prior
to a server's transmission. The host name included is that returned
by the gethostname(2) system call. The array at the end of the
message contains information about the users logged in to the sending
machine. This information includes the contents of the utmp(4) entry
for each non-idle terminal line and a value indicating the time since
a character was last received on the terminal line.
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rwhod(1M) (TCP/IP) rwhod(1M)
Messages received by the rwho server are discarded unless they
originated at a rwho server's port. In addition, if the host's name,
as specified in the message, contains any unprintable ASCII
characters, the message is discarded. Valid messages received by
rwhod are placed in files named whod.hostname in the directory
/var/spool/rwho. These files contain only the most recent message,
in the format described above.
Status messages are generated approximately once every 60 seconds.
rwhod performs an nlist(3) on /stand/unix every 10 minutes to guard
against the possibility that this file is not the system image
currently operating.
FILES
/var/spool/rwho
SEE ALSO
rwho(1), ruptime(1), w(1), gethostname(3), nlist(3), utmp(4).
NOTES
This service takes up progressively more network bandwidth as the
number of hosts on the local net increases. For large networks, the
cost becomes prohibitive.
rwhod should relay status information between networks. People often
interpret the server dying as a machine going down.
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