xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/w/w.1 (revision 8d20be1e22095c27faf8fe8b2f0d089739cc742e)
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28.\"     @(#)w.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd January 21, 2010
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 dhin
40.Op Fl M Ar core
41.Op Fl N Ar system
42.Op Ar user ...
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility prints a summary of the current activity on the system,
47including what each user is doing.
48The first line displays the current time of day, how long the system has
49been running, the number of users logged into the system, and the load
50averages.
51The load average numbers give the number of jobs in the run queue averaged
52over 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
53.Pp
54The fields output are the user's login name, the name of the terminal the
55user is on, the host from which the user is logged in, the time the user
56logged on, the time since the user last typed anything,
57and the name and arguments of the current process.
58.Pp
59The options are as follows:
60.Bl -tag -width indent
61.It Fl d
62dumps out the entire process list on a per controlling
63tty basis, instead of just the top level process.
64.It Fl h
65Suppress the heading.
66.It Fl i
67Output is sorted by idle time.
68.It Fl M
69Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
70core instead of the default
71.Pa /dev/kmem .
72.It Fl N
73Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
74default
75.Pa /boot/kernel/kernel .
76.It Fl n
77Do not attempt to resolve network addresses (normally
78.Nm
79interprets addresses and attempts to display them as names).
80.El
81.Pp
82If one or more
83.Ar user
84names are specified, the output is restricted to those users.
85.Sh FILES
86.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /var/run/utx.active" -compact
87.It Pa /var/run/utx.active
88list of users on the system
89.El
90.Sh COMPATIBILITY
91The
92.Fl f ,
93.Fl l ,
94.Fl s ,
95and
96.Fl w
97flags are no longer supported.
98.Sh SEE ALSO
99.Xr finger 1 ,
100.Xr ps 1 ,
101.Xr uptime 1 ,
102.Xr who 1
103.Sh HISTORY
104The
105.Nm
106command appeared in
107.Bx 3.0 .
108.Sh BUGS
109The notion of the
110.Dq current process
111is muddy.
112The current algorithm is
113.Do
114the highest numbered process on the terminal
115that is not ignoring interrupts, or, if there is none, the highest numbered
116process on the terminal
117.Dc .
118This fails, for example, in critical sections of programs like the shell
119and editor, or when faulty programs running in the background fork and fail
120to ignore interrupts.
121(In cases where no process can be found,
122.Nm
123prints
124.Ql \- . )
125.Pp
126The
127.Tn CPU
128time is only an estimate, in particular, if someone leaves a background
129process running after logging out, the person currently on that terminal is
130.Dq charged
131with the time.
132.Pp
133Background processes are not shown, even though they account for
134much of the load on the system.
135.Pp
136Sometimes processes, typically those in the background, are printed with
137null or garbaged arguments.
138In these cases, the name of the command is printed in parentheses.
139.Pp
140The
141.Nm
142utility does not know about the new conventions for detection of background
143jobs.
144It will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.
145