w(5) shows non-existent or lost process?

[Randy Belk]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Anton Shterenlikht <mexas at bristol.ac.uk> wrote:
> The who (or w, or finger) command shows that I'm still logged into ttyp5,
> even though I have rebooted the <xxx> box many times since. Does this mean
> the corresponding entry in /var/run/utmp is wrong and shouldn't be there, or is there
> still some process attached to ttyp5?
>
> ouput of w:
>
> USER             TTY      FROM      LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
> mexas            p4       <xxx>     1:32pm     - w
> mexas            p5       <xxx>:0. 26Jan09 21days -
>
> ps ax | grep ttyp5
>  shows no process
>
> Looking at w(1) man page it seems that "-" in WHAT can be an indication
> that the process failed but not cleanly and that there could be some forked
> sub-process still alive. Does this make sense? Which other commands I can use
> to see what's going on?
>
> many thanks
> anton
>
> --
> Anton Shterenlikht
> Room 2.6, Queen's Building
> Mech Eng Dept
> Bristol University
> University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
> Tel: +44 (0)117 928 8233
> Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423
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LSOF is your friend! The port is located in /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof
To find out what is using ttyp5 type in "lsof | grep ttyp5" and it
should show you the process




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