On 21 Jun 1999, Chris Jones wrote:

>>>>>> "matthew" == matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au> writes:
>
>matthew> i installed this a few weeks ago and it's great.  it looks
>matthew> exactly like our w(1) except that it ignores utmp and uses
>matthew> the process list to find out who is doing what on which tty!
>matthew> most excellent.
>
>Cool.  But there's definitely a reason that these programs (xterm,
>screen, etc.) allow users to not create utmp entries.  If I'm running
>12 xterms, and you type w, you probably don't want to see me 12 times.
>
>It seems to me that it would work well to have w(1) default to its
>current behavior, with a command-line option to get the complete list.

But if xterm sessions don't create utmp and wtmp entries, then you've no
record that the user had a session on the machine (apart from process
accounting).  And if you are in an environment where you have to justify
the existence of your unix system, there's a danger that management-types
can say "look, there's no-one using it".


Roger

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Roger Brooks (Systems Programmer),          |  Email: R.S.Brooks@liv.ac.uk
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