Working with People
There are several commands for checking to see who is on the computer and what they are doing.
The finger command shows who is on the computer and provides additional information, including how long their session has been idle, and their contact information.
$ finger Login Name TTY Idle When Bldg. Phone dhu Dick Hu *p6 4:25 Thu 14:12 4th Floor ext 2214 mchung Michael Chung *con 5:07 Fri 09:57 OS Support ext 1101 bgill Biringer Gill *p7 15 Fri 13:32
Some versions of Linux no longer include finger because of security concerns over finger's .plan files. Read the finger manual page for more information.
There are several other commands with similar functions. The users command shows a list of login names.
$ users bgill dhu mchung
The who command shows who is on the computer, which connection they are using, and when they signed on.
$ who dhu ttyp6 Mar 29 14:12 mchung console Apr 6 09:57 bgill ttyp7 Apr 6 13:32
The w command provides even more information, including system statistics and what the users are currently running.
$ w 3:18pm up 9 days, 20:33, 3 users, load average: 0.64, 0.66, 0.64 User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what dhu ttyp6 2:12pm 4:28 8:01 8:01 csh mchung console 9:57am 5:10 sh bgill ttyp7 1:32pm 19 bash