xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/w/w.1 (revision 43faedc1339a9624c7acedb7f3e5624e64da5b99)
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28.\"     @(#)w.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd December 1, 2015
32.Dt W 1
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm w
36.Nd "display who is logged in and what they are doing"
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.Nm
39.Op Fl -libxo
40.Op Fl dhin
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 indent
62.It Fl -libxo
63Generate output via
64.Xr libxo 3
65in a selection of different human and machine readable formats.
66See
67.Xr xo_parse_args 3
68for details on command line arguments.
69.It Fl d
70dumps out the entire process list on a per controlling
71tty basis, instead of just the top level process.
72.It Fl h
73Suppress the heading.
74.It Fl i
75Output is sorted by idle time.
76.It Fl M
77Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
78core instead of the default
79.Pa /dev/kmem .
80.It Fl N
81Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
82default
83.Pa /boot/kernel/kernel .
84.It Fl n
85Do not attempt to resolve network addresses (normally
86.Nm
87interprets addresses and attempts to display them as names).
88.El
89.Pp
90If one or more
91.Ar user
92names are specified, the output is restricted to those users.
93.Sh FILES
94.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /var/run/utx.active" -compact
95.It Pa /var/run/utx.active
96list of users on the system
97.El
98.Sh COMPATIBILITY
99The
100.Fl f ,
101.Fl l ,
102.Fl s ,
103and
104.Fl w
105flags are no longer supported.
106.Sh SEE ALSO
107.Xr finger 1 ,
108.Xr ps 1 ,
109.Xr uptime 1 ,
110.Xr who 1 ,
111.Xr libxo 3 ,
112.Xr xo_parse_args 3
113.Sh HISTORY
114The
115.Nm
116command appeared in
117.Bx 3.0 .
118.Sh BUGS
119The notion of the
120.Dq current process
121is muddy.
122The current algorithm is
123.Do
124the highest numbered process on the terminal
125that is not ignoring interrupts, or, if there is none, the highest numbered
126process on the terminal
127.Dc .
128This fails, for example, in critical sections of programs like the shell
129and editor, or when faulty programs running in the background fork and fail
130to ignore interrupts.
131(In cases where no process can be found,
132.Nm
133prints
134.Ql \- . )
135.Pp
136The
137.Tn CPU
138time is only an estimate, in particular, if someone leaves a background
139process running after logging out, the person currently on that terminal is
140.Dq charged
141with the time.
142.Pp
143Background processes are not shown, even though they account for
144much of the load on the system.
145.Pp
146Sometimes processes, typically those in the background, are printed with
147null or garbaged arguments.
148In these cases, the name of the command is printed in parentheses.
149.Pp
150The
151.Nm
152utility does not know about the new conventions for detection of background
153jobs.
154It will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.
155