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

Anton Shterenlikht mexas at bristol.ac.uk
Tue Feb 17 05:43:43 PST 2009


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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