"who | w" - Logged-in Users and Their Running Commands

Linux Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"who | w" - Logged-in Users and Their Running Commands

This section provides a tutorial example on how to display logged-in users and their running commands using 'who' and 'w' commands on Linux systems.

If the system shared with other users, you may want to know who else are logged in to the system at this moment using the "who" command. Here is an examples of "who" command output on my CentOS computer:

herong$ who -H

NAME     LINE     TIME               COMMENT
herong   pts/0    2024-08-10 20:02   (192.168.5.1)
john     pts/1    2018-03-16 19:27   (192.168.5.9)

You can also add the "-a" option to print out moer information:

herong$ who -H -a 

NAME     LINE        TIME             IDLE PID  COMMENT EXIT
         system boot 2024-03-04 22:56
         run-level 3 2024-03-04 14:56
LOGIN    ttyS0       2024-03-04 14:56      1350 id=tyS0
LOGIN    tty1        2024-03-04 14:56      1349 id=tty1
herong + pts/0       2024-08-10 20:02   .  5459 (192.168.5.1)
         pts/1       2024-08-08 12:37      5187 id=ts/1 term=0 exit=0
         pts/2       2024-07-08 11:56      9630 id=ts/2 term=0 exit=0
...

Note that the "-a" option is a combination of "-b -d -l -p -r -t -T -u" options, which are described below:

-b    time of last system boot
-d    print dead processes
-l    print system login processes
-p    print active processes spawned by init
-r    print current runlevel
-t    print last system clock change
-T    add user's message status as +, - or ?
-u    list users logged in

If you want to see what commands are loggin-in user running, you can use the "w" command:

herong$ w 

 20:48:49 up 159 days,  5:52,  1 user,  load average: 0.04, 0.05, 0.02

USER   TTY   FROM        LOGIN@ IDLE  JCPU  PCPU  WHAT
herong pts/0 192.168.5.1 20:02  1.00s 0.01s 0.00s top