Not able to understand the output of w command

pinga123 · 08-09-2011, 11:03 PM

I have taken putty session of a server from two separate machines namely HOST1(3 sessions) and HOST2(1 Session) .
However w command says there are 5 users

Confused over the output any clue will be appreciated.

Code:

# w
 09:29:36 up 34 days, 15:48,  5 users,  load average: 0.62, 4.33, 8.16
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root     pts/17   HOST1    09:18    4:26   0.01s  0.01s -bash
root     pts/18   HOST1    09:27    1:21   0.00s  0.00s -bash
root     pts/21   HOST2    09:29    0.00s  0.00s  0.00s w
root     pts/20   HOST1    09:29    1:39   0.00s  0.00s -bash

mayankc · 08-10-2011, 04:07 AM

Does this issue reproduce every time (with different no. of users)?. what if you use 'who' instead of 'w'. The no. of users detected by who and w should be equal.

pinga123 · 08-11-2011, 12:25 AM

Things are getting worsen.

Code:

# who
root     pts/14       2011-08-11 10:53 (HOST1)
[root@OFSMUW-VS-60 ~]# w
 10:53:45 up 35 days, 17:12,  3 users,  load average: 0.12, 0.15, 0.13
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root     pts/14   HOST1    10:53    0.00s  0.01s  0.00s w

mayankc · 08-12-2011, 01:10 AM

can you tell what proc library version (libproc-version-no.so) is being used? you can find the library file at /lib/liproc-version-no.so location.

If it is libproc-3.2.8.so, the issue could be with this library. Replacing to older version (3.2.7) might help. To revert to older version do the following steps.

1. Go to http://procps.sourceforge.net/download.html
2. Download procps-3.2.7.tar.gz
3. extract the package - tar zxvf procps-3.2.7.tar.gz
4. cd procps-3.2.7
5. make
6. copy proc/libproc-3.2.7.so to /lib/
7. copy w (binary file) to /user/bin (keep the original till you test it okei)

Now, run w and see if this gets you the correct users. If so, do make install so that working binaries and libraries is installed in your machine.