W(1) User Commands W(1)
NAME
w - Show who is logged on and what they are doing.
SYNOPSIS
w [options] [user]
DESCRIPTION
w displays information about the users currently on the machine, and
their processes. The header shows, in this order, the current time, how
long the system has been running, how many users are currently logged
on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.
The following entries are displayed for each user: login name, the tty
name, the remote host, login time, idle time, JCPU, PCPU, and the com-
mand line of their current process.
The JCPU time is the time used by all processes attached to the tty. It
does not include past background jobs, but does include currently run-
ning background jobs.
The PCPU time is the time used by the current process, named in the
"what" field.
COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
-h, --no-header
Don't print the header.
-u, --no-current
Ignores the username while figuring out the current process and
cpu times. To demonstrate this, do a su and do a w and a w -u.
-s, --short
Use the short format. Don't print the login time, JCPU or PCPU
times.
-t, --terminal
Usually w will use either the systemd sessions table or the utmp
file to locate users. In terminal mode w will scan the terminal
devices and locate user sessions this way. This is not a true
count of users, for example a user with two xterms will show up
twice, so the user count in the header will be different. Cur-
rently terminal devices scanned are /dev/tty* and /dev/pts/*.
-f, --from
Toggle printing the from (remote hostname) field. The default as
released is for the from field to not be printed, although your
system administrator or distribution maintainer may have compiled
a version in which the from field is shown by default.
--help Display help text and exit.
-i, --ip-addr
Display IP address instead of hostname for from field.
-p, --pids
Display pid of the login process/the "what" process in the "what"
field. The login process is also called the session leader.
-V, --version
Display version information.
-o, --old-style
Old style output. Prints blank space for idle times less than
one minute.
user Show information about the specified user only.
ENVIRONMENT
PROCPS_USERLEN
Override the default width of the username column. Defaults to
8.
PROCPS_FROMLEN
Override the default width of the from column. Defaults to 16.
FILES
/var/run/utmp
information about who is currently logged on, only for non-sys-
temd hosts.
/proc process information
/dev/tty* , /dev/pts/*
Terminal device files scanned with --terminal mode.
BUGS
When using --terminal option, w assumes processes with a parent PID of 0
or 1 are agetty(8) processes and will not display them. This is prone to
both false postive and negative errors.
REPORTING BUGS
Please send bug reports to ]8;;mailto:procps@freelists.org\procps@freelists.org]8;;\
SEE ALSO
free(1), loginctl(1), ps(1), top(1), uptime(1), who(1), utmp(5),
agetty(8)
procps-ng 2023-01-15 W(1)
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