Who / what is on my machine???
 

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out what is running on my system. I've included the output of who and ps below. What has triggered my curiosity is the number of users gkrellm is showing. Gkrellm usually indicates 2 users. When I'm not on-line it now indicates 4 users. When I go on-line it indicates 5 users with an unusual high number of processes.. I have checked Gnome system monitor for process id's that match the id's indicated in who -u, but there are none that match.

I guess I'm concerned that somehow my system has been hijacked or something. (maybe just a little paranoid)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Output of who -u
paul :0 Jan 27 09:34 ? 2876
paul pts/0 Jan 27 09:34 00:23 3075
paul pts/1 Jan 27 09:34 00:23 3082
paul pts/2 Jan 27 09:54 . 4063

output of ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
4063 pts/2 00:00:00 bash
4299 pts/2 00:00:00 ps

Thanks

Paul

Hi.

There's nothing wrong there. Every terminal you have open gets listed as another instance of your username.

The process numbers are just the ID of that process - each process that is launched gets a process ID one higher than the last process to be launched.

E.g. my who -u looks like:

dave tty1 Jan 26 15:28 02:49 983
dave pts/1 Jan 27 13:33 02:49 4843
dave pts/2 Jan 27 16:19 00:03 5459
dave pts/3 Jan 27 16:20 . 5488

and my ps returns:

PID TTY TIME CMD
5488 pts/3 00:00:00 bash
5517 pts/3 00:00:00 ps

Don't worry about it.

Dave

Thanks Dave;

It still seems to me that just last week gkrellm indicated 2 users when I wasn't on-line and 3 when on-line. Just trying to fugure why it suddenly changed to 4 and 5.

I guess it's the nature of the beast.

Paul

P.S. I'd "affero" ya if I had the bucks. Unfortunately, I'm unemployed and squeezing every penny I can. :(

Hi again.

Try ps -AH

You'll see what programs are being run by each instance of 'paul' (what's running on each pts/)

You'll probably find that they're programs that you're using, for example if you use a ternimal to open your internet connection, that terminal might still be open and will still be listed as paul on pts/x

Dave

Just a FYI, you don't have to donate to use Affero, its also a type of rating system. Someone gives a help reply and answer, feel free to let others know that they were helpful by rating them.

Regards.