Bug #971
open
w(1) is confused by screen
0%
Description
Correct output from 'w' when using screen in non-login mode:
login% w 2:41pm up 23 day(s), 15:11, 3 users, load average: 0.38, 0.32, 0.33 User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what river pts/8 Wed11am 2:00 11 6 -zsh river pts/9 Wed 2pm -zsh river pts/11 Wed11am 2 2 screen -rd
When switching one screen window to logged in mode (:login on), it continues to print 3 users, although there are now 4:
login% w 2:41pm up 23 day(s), 15:11, 3 users, load average: 0.34, 0.31, 0.33 User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what river pts/8 Wed11am 2:00 11 6 -zsh river pts/9 Wed 2pm -zsh river pts/11 Wed11am 2 2 screen -rd river pts/12 2:41pm 1:52 1:52 epic5 felicity__ irc.freenode.ne
Output from 'who' for comparison:
river pts/8 Apr 27 11:47 (ilythia.tcx.org.uk) river pts/9 Apr 27 14:05 (ilythia.tcx.org.uk) river pts/11 Apr 27 11:40 (ilythia.tcx.org.uk) river pts/12 Apr 28 14:41 (:pts/11:S.0)
Updated by Albert Lee about 12 years ago
Quote attributed to Bryan: "Unbelievably, for utmp entries which correspond to running processes (thatis, utmp entries of type USER_PROCESS), the e_exit field is zero ifthe entry was created by superuser, or NONROOT_USR otherwise (I'mnot making this up). NONROOT_USR is #define'd to be 2 (despite thefact that there is no 1; Moonbeam was probably just trying to flip the bird to The Man). Interestingly, there is no 3, or anything else for thatmatter. There is, however, a macro to get at this value: nonuser() (probably added by Moonbeam while in Rehab in the Nancy Reganite mid '80s).The macro is used virtually nowhere, with one notable exception:(you guessed it) who(1)."
Updated by Albert Lee about 12 years ago
- Category set to cmd - userland programs
- Priority changed from Normal to Low
Updated by River Tarnell about 12 years ago
In short, the first line of w's output counts only 'root' processes, while the listing displays processes from all users. This seems confusing and not very useful: either something is a user, or it's not.