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W(1)									  W(1)

NAME
       w - who is on and what they are doing

SYNOPSIS
       w [ -h ] [ -s ] [ 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 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 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.

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

FILES
       /etc/utmp
       /dev/kmem
       /dev/drum

SEE ALSO
       who(1), finger(1), ps(1)

AUTHOR
       Mark Horton

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 ``-''.)

       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.

4th Berkeley Distribution	April 29, 1985				  W(1)

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