Configuring rwhod, the Server for rwho and ruptime

The rwhod daemon checks the state of your host and generates status messages, which it broadcasts on the network every 180 seconds. It also listens for status messages broadcast by rwhod daemons on remote hosts, and it records these messages in a database of files in /var/spool/rwho. The files are named whod.hostname, where hostname is the name of the remote host from which the status information came. The status messages are displayed when users issue the rwho or ruptime command.

In the /etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons file, set the RWHOD variable to 1.
Issue the following command to start the rwhod daemon:
/sbin/init.d/rwhod start

Status information collected by rwhod for the local host and from each remote host includes the following:

System load average.
Host name as returned by gethostbyname.
Users logged in.
Time of last activity for logged-in users.

Because UDP (User Datagram protocol) broadcasts do not go through gateways, rwho and ruptime do not report status for hosts that can be reached only through a gateway.

For more information on rwhod, see the following man pages: rwhod(1M), rwho(1), and ruptime(1).

Configuring rwhod, the Server for rwho and ruptime

Technical documentation

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