xref: /openbsd/usr.bin/w/w.1 (revision 7c024529)
1.\"	$OpenBSD: w.1,v 1.16 2004/08/18 21:27:20 jmc Exp $
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30.\"     @(#)w.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
31.\"
32.Dd June 6, 1993
33.Dt W 1
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm w
37.Nd "display users who are logged on and what they are doing"
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Nm w
40.Op Fl ahi
41.Op Fl M Ar core
42.Op Fl N Ar system
43.Op Ar user
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Nm
47utility prints a summary of the current activity on the system,
48including what each user is doing.
49The first line displays the current time of day, how long the system has
50been running, the number of users logged into the system, and the load
51averages.
52The load average numbers give the number of jobs in the run queue averaged
53over 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
54.Pp
55The fields output are the user's login name, the name of the terminal the
56user is on, the host from which the user is logged in, the time the user
57logged on, the time since the user last typed anything,
58and the name and arguments of the current process.
59.Pp
60The options are as follows:
61.Bl -tag -width Ds
62.It Fl a
63Attempt to translate network addresses into names.
64.It Fl h
65Suppress the heading.
66.It Fl i
67Output is sorted by idle time.
68.It Fl M Ar core
69Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
70.Ar core
71instead of the running kernel.
72.It Fl N Ar system
73Extract the name list from the specified
74.Ar system
75instead of the running kernel.
76.El
77.Pp
78If a
79.Ar user
80name is specified, the output is restricted to that user.
81.Sh FILES
82.Bl -tag -width /var/run/utmp -compact
83.It Pa /var/run/utmp
84list of users on the system
85.El
86.Sh SEE ALSO
87.Xr finger 1 ,
88.Xr ps 1 ,
89.Xr uptime 1 ,
90.Xr who 1 ,
91.Xr utmp 5
92.Sh STANDARDS
93The
94.Fl f ,
95.Fl l ,
96.Fl s ,
97.Fl u ,
98and
99.Fl w
100flags are no longer supported.
101.Sh HISTORY
102The
103.Nm
104command appeared in
105.Bx 3.0 .
106.Sh BUGS
107The notion of the
108.Dq current process
109is muddy.
110The current algorithm is
111``the highest numbered process on the terminal
112that is not ignoring interrupts, or, if there is none, the highest numbered
113process on the terminal.''
114This fails, for example, in critical sections of programs like the shell
115and editor, or when faulty programs running in the background fork and fail
116to ignore interrupts.
117(In cases where no process can be found,
118.Nm
119prints
120.Dq \- . )
121.Pp
122The CPU time is only an estimate.
123In particular, if someone leaves a background
124process running after logging out, the person currently on that terminal is
125.Dq charged
126with the time.
127.Pp
128Background processes are not shown, even though they account for
129much of the load on the system.
130.Pp
131Sometimes processes, typically those in the background, are printed with
132null or garbaged arguments.
133In these cases, the name of the command is printed in parentheses.
134.Pp
135The
136.Nm
137utility does not know about the new conventions for detection of background
138jobs.
139It will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.
140