Hide Forgot
Idle times for remote users are reported wrongly and they don't match up with finger. eg. finger: Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone seti pt Apr 21 08:34 (elan.maths.monash.edu.au) w: USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT seti pts/0 elan.maths.monas 8:34am 4:40m 38.33s 0.01s w w shows 4:40minutes of idle time wheras finger shows zero (the correct value). w gets hours and seconds screwed up as well I think. This has happened on all i386 platforms that I've tried.
$ w 6:12pm up 5 days, 23:47, 2 users, load average: 0.20, 0.14, 0.10 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT rob tty1 5:38pm 29.00s 2:05 0.07s -bash root tty2 6:11pm 34.00s 0.14s 0.05s -bash $ finger Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone rob Robert W. Current 1 Apr 23 17:38 root root *2 Apr 23 18:11 $ Mine shows exactly what your reporting, ALTHOUGH, I don't believe w is showing an incorrect idle time, it is just reporting times from console. If your in X, it's likely that w isn't picking up the actions you do in an xterm. Try to look at them from console. eg: [rob@water rob]$ w 6:15pm up 5 days, 23:50, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.07, 0.08 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT rob tty1 5:38pm 0.00s 2:08 0.01s script times root tty2 6:11pm 3:24 0.14s 0.05s -bash [rob@water rob]$ finger Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone rob Robert W. Current 1 Apr 23 17:38 root root *2 3 Apr 23 18:11 [rob@water rob]$ Which appears correctly. So, it looks like something to do with what's going on in X (don't know about telnet, maybe that acts like X also). But, they are working correctly from console. Don't know if it's any help, but at least it's more specific.
Rob appears to be right.