The w command is primarily used to display the details of users who are currently logged in to a system and their transactions. The first line of the output displays the status of the system. The second line of the output displays a table with the first column listing the users logged in to the system and the last column indicating the current activities of the users. The remaining columns of the table show different attributes associated with the users.
Syntax
The syntax of the w command is:
$ w [options] [user name]
An example of the w command is shown in the following example:
# w 16:48:16 up 348 days, 8:06, 1 user, load average: 2.90, 3.53, 3.51 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT geek pts/77 xx.xx.xx.xx 11:11 0.00s 0.31s 0.09s sshd: geek[priv]
The output shows rows of data with the following columns:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| USER | User login name |
| TTY | The controlling Terminal type, listed as pts/N (pseudo-terminal) in GUI, or ttyN on the system console or other directly connected device |
| FROM | Remote hostname from which the user has logged in |
| LOGIN@ | Login time of the user |
| IDLE | How long it has been since the user typed any input on that Terminal |
| JCPU | CPU time consumption of all the processes attached to tty, including jobs currently running in the background |
| PCPU | CPU time consumption of the current processes named in the WHAT field |
| WHAT | The command line of the process currently executing |
If you encounter below error while running the w command:
w: command not found
you may try installing the below package as per your choice of distribution:
| Distribution | Command |
|---|---|
| Arch Linux | pacman -S procps-ng |
| CentOS | yum install procps-ng |
| Fedora | dnf install procps-ng |
w Command Examples
1. Show logged-in users info:
$ w
2. Show logged-in users info without a header:
$ w -h