W(1)                                                                      W(1)


NAME
     w - who is on and what they are doing

SYNOPSIS
     w [ -fhlsuW ] [ 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 user's login name, the name of the tty the
     user is on, the host from which the user is logged in (generally the
     session's $DISPLAY variable: see xdm(1)), the time the user logged on,
     the length of time 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 options are:

     -h   suppresses the heading.

     -u   displays the heading only (same as uptime(1)).

     -s   displays 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.

     -f   suppresses the ``from'' field.

     -W   shows a wider field for the program name and displays the ``from''
          field on a separate line, untruncated.  (The utmpx ut_host field
          accommodates a 256-character string, but most commands truncate
          before displaying it).

     If a user name is included, the output will be restricted to that user.

NOTES
     will report the time elapsed since input occurred, while who will report
     the time elapsed since output occurred (roughly speaking).  If there is a
     job running that produces output, the idle times will differ between the
     two programs:

     babylon: who -Hu
     NAME       LINE         TIME          IDLE    PID  COMMENTS
     root       ttyd1        Jul  6 10:37   .     1955  alt console


     babylon: w
     User     tty from        login@  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
     root     d1             10:37am  5:54     23     23  tail -f SYSLOG

     wanda: w -W
       6:06am  up 755 days, 13:53,  6 users,  load average: 0.11, 0.10, 0.11
     User     tty       login@  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
     jimclark ttyq36    6:06am  1:56                -ksh
              192.111.17.42
     tj       ttyq33    Fri 8am         8:21      6  rlogin peanut.csd
              :0.0
     ed       ttyq38    6:11am            1         w -W
              gate-bonnie.wpd.sgi.com:0.0

FILES
     /var/adm/utmp
     /dev/kmem

SEE ALSO
     xdm(1), who(1), ps(1), uptime(1)

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
     background fork and fail to ignore interrupts.  (In cases where no
     process can be found, w prints ``-''.)

     When calculating load average, certain sleeping processes are counted as
     runnable.

     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 new conventions for detection of background
     jobs.  It will sometimes find a background job instead of the right one.


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