w(1)               UNIX System V(BSD Compatibility Package)                w(1)


NAME
      w - who is logged in, and what are they doing

SYNOPSIS
      /usr/ucb/w [ -hls ] [ user ]

DESCRIPTION
      The w command displays a summary of the current activity on the system,
      including what each user is doing.  The heading line shows the current
      time of day, how long the system has been up, and the number of users
      logged into the system.

      The fields displayed are: the users login name, the name of the tty the
      user is on, the time of day the user logged on (in hours:minutes), the
      idle time-that is, the number of minutes since the user last typed
      anything (in hours:minutes), the CPU time used by all processes and their
      children on that terminal (in minutes:seconds), the CPU time used by the
      currently active processes (in minutes:seconds), the name and arguments
      of the current process.

      If a user name is included, output is restricted to that user.

      The following options are available:

      -h    Suppress the heading.

      -l    Produce a long form of output, which is the default.

      -s    Produce a short form of output.  In the short form, the tty is
            abbreviated, the login time and CPU times are left off, as are the
            arguments to commands.

EXAMPLE
      w
      7:36am  up 6 days, 16:45,  1 users
      User  tty   login@      idle  JCPU  PCPU  what
      ralph console     7:10am         1  10:05 4:31  w

FILES
      /var/adm/utmp
      /dev/kmem
      /dev/drum

SEE ALSO
      ps(1), who(1) in the User's Reference Manual
      utmp(4), whodo(1M) in the System Administrator's Reference Manual

NOTES
      The notion of the ``current process'' is muddy.  The current algorithm is
      `the highest numbered process on the terminal that is not ignoring
      interrupts, or, if there is none, the highest numbered process on the
      terminal'.  This fails, for example, in critical sections of programs


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w(1)               UNIX System V(BSD Compatibility Package)                w(1)


      like the shell and editor, or when faulty programs running in the
      background fork and fail to ignore interrupts.  In cases where no process
      can be found, w prints -.

      The CPU time is only an estimate, in particular, if someone leaves a
      background process running after logging out, the person currently on
      that terminal is ``charged'' with the time.

      Background processes are not shown, even though they account for much of
      the load on the system.

      Sometimes processes, typically those in the background, are printed with
      null or garbaged arguments.  In these cases, the name of the command is
      printed in parentheses.

      w does not know about the conventions for detecting background jobs.  It
      will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.





































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