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** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
Status: Triaged => Invalid
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/268780
Title:
who (or w) does not report correctly idle time
Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
Invalid
Bug description:
Binary package hint: coreutils
Release: [Ubuntu 8.04.1]
---------
Package: coreutils (included in the core of Ubuntu)
----------
cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.24-19-generic (buildd@king) (gcc version 4.2.3 (Ubuntu
4.2.3-2ubuntu7)) #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 17:53:40 UTC 2008
When you do :
info coreutils 'who invocation'
The documentation says :
`-u'
After the login time, print the number of hours and minutes that
the user has been idle. `.' means the user was active in the last
minute. `old' means the user has been idle for more than 24 hours.
What I expect to happen
-------------------------------
When you type the command
who -u
who -a
w
I expect to happen what is written in the documentation: get the idle
time.
To my understanding, 'idle' means that the user does not use any input
device : keyboard, mouse, touchpad, tablet...
What I get instead:
-----------------------
The "bug" is that mouse events are not at all taken into account (I don't
know for tablets, joystisk...)
How to reproduce the "bug":
------------------------------------
To check that, put the following script on you desktop :
who.sh
#######
#!/bin/bash
who -a
read key
Then DO NOT touch the keyboard, and launch the script with the mouse.
Kill it also with the mouse.
You'll see the idle timer going up for your user + tty7 (if you are
using default Ubuntu settings for your graphical desktop), although
you are not idle because you moved the mouse and clicked.
Same if you replace who by w
Conclusion:
--------------
So either the behavior is wrong, or the documentation is inacurate about what
is considered being idle.
Related suggestion:
-------------------------
It could also be added in the documentation, that idle time is ALSO reported
as 'old' when the user has always been idle (in the meaning 'who' gives to it)
since the beginning of the session. So in fact, the user might have been active
just a few minutes before on another session, and it's not only when you have
"more than 24 hours" of 'idle'.
May be related bugs:
---------------------------
Second bug with the idle timer, when you open a remote X session (for
instance, CTRL+ALT+F1 and X -query 192.168.0.XXX :1), the idle timer is ALWAYS
reported as 'old' in this session, even if you do keyboard inputs.
It is seen as 'old' by the remote user, or by an user connected locally to
this remote station.
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