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NAME
w - display information about currently logged-in users
SYNOPSIS
w [-hlsuw] [user]
DESCRIPTION
The w command displays a summary of the current activity on
the system, including what each user is doing. The heading
line shows the current time, the length of time the system
has been up, the number of users logged into the system, and
the average number of jobs in the run queue over the last 1,
5 and 15 minutes.
The fields displayed are: the user's login name, the name of
the tty the user is on, the time of day the user logged on
(in hours:minutes), the idle time-that is, the number of
minutes since the user last typed anything (in
hours:minutes), the CPU time used by all processes and their
children on that terminal (in minutes:seconds), the CPU time
used by the currently active processes (in minutes:seconds),
and the name and arguments of the current process.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-h Suppresses the heading.
-l Produces a long form of output, which is the
default.
-s Produces 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 com-
mands.
-u Produces the heading line which shows the current
time, the length of time the system has been up,
the number of users logged into the system, and the
average number of jobs in the run queue over the
last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
-w Produces a long form of output, which is also the
same as the default.
OPERANDS
user Name of a particular user for whom login informa-
tion is displayed. If specified, output is res-
tricted to that user.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Sample Output From the w Command
example% w
10:54am up 27 day(s), 57 mins, 1 user, load average: 0.28, 0.26, 0.22
User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what
ralph console 7:10am 1 10:05 4:31 w
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environ-
ment variables that affect the execution of w: LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, and LC_TIME.
FILES
/var/adm/utmpx user and accounting information
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
ps(1), who(1), whodo(1M), utmpx(4), attributes(5),
environ(5)
NOTES
The notion of the "current process" is unclear. 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 pro-
cess 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 command is printed in parentheses.
w does not know about the conventions for detecting back-
ground jobs. It will sometimes find a background job instead
of the right one.