W(1)                    GENIX Programmer's Manual                    W(1)



      NAME
           w - who is on and what they are doing

      SYNOPSIS
           w [ -h ] [ -s ] [ user ]

      DESCRIPTION
           W prints 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, the  number  of  users  logged
           into  the  system,  and the load averages.  The load average numbers
           give the number of jobs in the run queue averaged over 1, 5  and  15
           minutes.

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

           The -h flag suppresses the heading.  The -s flag asks  for  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  com-
           mands.  -l gives the long output, which is the default.

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

      FILES
           /etc/utmp
           /dev/kmem
           /dev/drum

      SEE ALSO
           who(1), finger(1), ps(1)

      AUTHOR
           Mark Horton

      BUGS
           The notion of the ``current process'' is muddy.  The  current  algo-
           rithm  is ``the highest numbered process on the terminal that is not
           ignoring interrupts, or, if there is none, the highest numbered pro-
           cess  on  the terminal''.  This fails, for example, in critical sec-
           tions of programs 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.



      Printed 11/16/83                                                        1

      W(1)                    GENIX Programmer's Manual                    W(1)



           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 new conventions  for  detection  of  back-
           ground jobs.  It will sometimes find a background job instead of the
           right one.













































      Printed 11/16/83                                                        2