w(1BSD) (BSD System Compatibility) w(1BSD)
NAME
w - (BSD) 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
Executing w with no options produces output similar to the
following:
7:36am up 6 days, 16:45, 1 user
User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what
ralph console 7:10am 1 10:05 4:31 w
FILES
/var/adm/utmp
REFERENCES
ps(1), utmp(4), who(1), whodo(1M)
Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc. Page 1
w(1BSD) (BSD System Compatibility) w(1BSD)
NOTICES
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 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.
Unlike other BSD versions of this command, the load averages
are not computed or displayed.
Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc. Page 2