subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik Saligrama Subbarao) (11/30/89)
The w command is a very interesting and useful one! I quote
SYNTAX
w [ -h ] [ -s ] [ -l ] [ user ]
DESCRIPTION
The w command 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 users login name, the name of the
tty the user is on, the time of day the user logged on, the
number of minutes 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 -h flag suppresses the heading. The -s flag asks for a
short form of output. In the short form, the tty is abbre-
viated, the login time and cpu times are left off, as are
the arguments to commands. -l gives the long output, which
is the default. The -d flag outputs debug information. The
-u flag outputs the same information uptime command.
If a user name is included, the output will be restricted to
that user.
RESTRICTIONS
The notion of the ``current process'' is unclear. The
current algorithm is roughly ``the last process started on
the terminal that is not ignoring interrupts, or, if there
is none, the last process started 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 ``-''.)
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.
Mind you, the w command is not perfect, and it won't be accurate 100%
of the time. But as far as getting info on other people, the w command
is GREAT! Alas, it is not supported on all UNIX systems -- In that
case, look up finger, who, rusers, rwho and similar commands!
As to talking to a SPECIFIC window, you first have to get the person's
tty# (with w or some other command). Then, it is simple. Type
talk userid tty#
where tty# is the tty on which you want to talk to the person. That's
all there is to it!
-An up and coming UNIX personality,
Kartik Subbarao
P.S. Please, no Miss Manners on talk!! PLEASE!!!!
subbarao@phoenix.princeton.edu
subbarao@gauguin.princeton.edu
subbarao@bogey.princeton.edutale@cs.rpi.edu (Dave Lawrence) (12/01/89)
In <11833@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Kartik Saligrama Subbarao) writes:
Mind you, the w command is not perfect, and it won't be accurate 100%
of the time. But as far as getting info on other people, the w command
is GREAT! Alas, it is not supported on all UNIX systems -- In that
case, look up finger, who, rusers, rwho and similar commands!
It is a BSDism; systems with Berkeley influences will tend to have it.
Since it is a local command, though, it is worthless as far as talking
to people not on the machine is concerned. If I am on turing.cs.rpi.edu
and want to talk to someone on life.pawl.rpi.edu, for example, I can
not find anything out about what that person is doing through any
combination of those commands.
As to talking to a SPECIFIC window, you first have to get the person's
tty# (with w or some other command). Then, it is simple. Type
finger can handle this for both the local machine and remote machines.
(Depending on the fingerd that is there. finger @mts.rpi.edu will not
give you any tty information, but then again you would be accomplishing
quite a feat if you managed a talk session to that site, anyway.)
talk userid tty#
You will need userid@host for anything but the local machine.
Dave
--
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