w – display logged-in users and their activity

w is a command-line utility that displays information about users currently logged in to a Linux system and the processes associated with their sessions. It provides a convenient way to see who is using a machine and what they are doing.

The output begins with a summary of the system’s current time, uptime, number of logged-in users and load averages over the preceding one, five and fifteen minutes.

For each session, w reports the username, terminal, remote host where applicable, login time, idle time and current command. It also distinguishes between CPU time consumed by processes associated with the terminal and CPU time consumed by the current process.

This makes w particularly useful for system administrators checking interactive sessions, investigating activity on shared machines and monitoring remote logins.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• Displays information about users currently logged in to the system.
• Reports the number of active user sessions.
• Shows system uptime and load averages.
• Displays terminal names and remote host information.
• Reports login times and session idle times.
• Shows JCPU and PCPU usage associated with user sessions.
• Identifies the command currently running in each session.
• Can restrict output to a specified username.
• Provides a shortened output format.
• Supports suppressing the system information header.
• Can display process IDs for login and current processes.
• Offers terminal-based session detection as an alternative to session records.
• Supports configurable widths for username and remote host columns.
• Provides an option to display container uptime instead of host uptime.
• Can adjust whether remote host information is displayed.

Website: github.com/warmchang/procps
Support:
Developer: Charles Blake and procps-ng contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

w is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Alternatives to who | Return to Alternatives to uptime

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