Ubuntu Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v1.25, by Herong Yang
"who | w" - Logged-in Users and Their Running Commands
This section provides a tutorial example on how to display logged-in users and their running commands using 'who' and 'w' commands on Ubuntu systems.
If the system shared with other users, you may want to know who else are logged in to the system at this moment using the "who" command. Here is an examples of "who" command output on my Ubuntu computer:
herong$ who -H NAME LINE TIME COMMENT herong pts/0 2024-08-10 20:02 (192.168.5.1) john pts/1 2018-03-16 19:27 (192.168.5.9)
You can also add the "-a" option to print out more information:
herong$ who -H -a
NAME LINE TIME IDLE PID COMMENT EXIT
system boot 2025-09-01 07:12
run-level 5 2025-09-01 07:12
herong ? :0 2025-09-01 07:13 ? 1795 (:0)
...
Note that the "-a" option is a combination of "-b -d -l -p -r -t -T -u" options, which are described below:
-b time of last system boot -d print dead processes -l print system login processes -p print active processes spawned by init -r print current runlevel -t print last system clock change -T add user's message status as +, - or ? -u list users logged in
If you want to see what commands are logged-in users running, you can use the "w" command:
herong$ w 20:48:49 up 159 days, 5:52, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.05, 0.02 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT herong pts/0 192.168.5.1 20:02 1.00s 0.01s 0.00s top
Table of Contents
►Introduction to Ubuntu Systems
hostnamectl - Display System Information
"free" - Display Free and Used Memory
►"who | w" - Logged-in Users and Their Running Commands
GNOME - Desktop Interface and Environment
Shell - The Command-Line Interpreter