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Bug 2296

Summary:	w reports wrong idle times
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	seti
Component:	procps	Assignee:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-07-29 22:00:06 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description seti 1999-04-20 22:53:03 UTC

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.

Comment 1 rob 1999-04-23 23:17:59 UTC

$ 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.

Comment 2 Michael K. Johnson 1999-07-29 22:00:59 UTC

Rob appears to be right.