W(1)                                                                      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 commands.  -l gives
       the long output, which is the default.

       If a _u_s_e_r 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 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 back‐
       ground 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 com‐
       mand is printed in parentheses.

       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.



4th Berkeley Distribution       April 29, 1985                            W(1)