usr/src/usr.bin/w/w.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1991 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\"
.\"     @(#)w.1 6.8 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.Dd
.Dt W 1
.Os BSD 4
.Sh NAME
.Nm w
.Nd "who present users are and what they are doing"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm w
.Op Fl hi
.Op Ar user
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm W
prints a summary of the current activity on the system,
including what each user is doing.
The heading 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.
.Pp
The fields output are:
the user's login name, the name of the terminal (tty) the user is on,
the host from which the user is logged in, the time the user logged on,
the time since the user last typed anything,
the
.Tn CPU
time used by all processes and their children on that tty,
the
.Tn CPU
time used by the currently active processes, and the name and arguments
of the current process.
.Pp
Available options are:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl h
Suppress the heading.
.It Fl i
Output is sorted by idle time.
.El
.Pp
If a
.Ar user
name is given, the output is restricted to that user.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /var/run/utmp -compact
.It Pa /var/run/utmp
list of users on the system
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr who 1 ,
.Xr finger 1 ,
.Xr ps 1
.Sh BUGS
The notion of the
.Dq 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,
.Nm w
prints
.Dq \- . )
.Pp
The
.Tn 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
.Dq charged
with the time.
.Pp
Background processes are not shown, even though they account for
much of the load on the system.
.Pp
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.
.Pp
.Nm W
does not know about the new conventions for detection of background jobs.
It will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
The
.Fl f ,
.Fl l ,
.Fl s ,
and
.Fl w
flags are no longer supported.
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Ux 3.0 .