Rwhod
is the server which maintains the database used by the
rwho 1
and
ruptime 1
programs. Its operation is predicated on the ability to
broadcast
messages on a network.
Rwhod
operates as both a producer and consumer of status information.
As a producer of information it periodically
queries the state of the system and constructs
status messages which are broadcast on a network.
As a consumer of information, it listens for other
rwhod
servers' status messages, validating them, then recording
them in a collection of files located in the directory
/var/spool/rwho .
The server transmits and receives messages at the port indicated
in the ``rwho'' service specification; see
services 5 .
If the
b
flag is supplied, only broadcast interfaces, such as ethernets, will
be used.
If the
p
flag is supplied, only point-to-point interfaces will be used. If the
a
flag is supplied, or no flags are supplied, all interfaces will be
used.
The messages sent and received, are of the form:
-literal -offset indent
struct outmp {
char out_line[8]; /* tty name */
char out_name[8]; /* user id */
long out_time; /* time on */
};
struct whod {
char wd_vers;
char wd_type;
char wd_fill[2];
int wd_sendtime;
int wd_recvtime;
char wd_hostname[32];
int wd_loadav[3];
int wd_boottime;
struct whoent {
struct outmp we_utmp;
int we_idle;
} wd_we[1024 / sizeof (struct whoent)];
};
All fields are converted to network byte order prior to
transmission. The load averages are as calculated by the
w 1
program, and represent load averages over the 5, 10, and 15 minute
intervals prior to a server's transmission; they are multiplied by 100
for representation in an integer. The host name
included is that returned by the
gethostname 2
system call, with any trailing domain name omitted.
The array at the end of the message contains information about
the users logged in to the sending machine. This information
includes the contents of the
utmp 5
entry for each non-idle terminal line and a value indicating the
time in seconds since a character was last received on the terminal line.
Messages received by the
rwho
server are discarded unless they originated at an
rwho
server's port. In addition, if the host's name, as specified
in the message, contains any unprintable
ASCII
characters, the
message is discarded. Valid messages received by
rwhod
are placed in files named
whod.hostname
in the directory
/var/spool/rwho .
These files contain only the most recent message, in the
format described above.
Status messages are generated approximately once every
3 minutes.
Rwhod
recomputes the system boot time every 30 minutes because on
some (non-Linux) systems it is not a totally reliable process.
