Multiple instances of same user at the same time

[KitchiRUs]

Hi,

So I noticed something on my Fedora 17 KDE 64-bit machine.
When I ran the "uptime" command in terminal, this was the output -

[krishna@Kitchi ~]$ uptime
 21:58:00 up  5:58,  4 users,  load average: 0.28, 0.16, 0.09

But there is only one account setup on my computer, so I ran the "users" command, and this was the output

[krishna@Kitchi ~]$ users
krishna krishna krishna krishna

It appears that I've logged in four times with the same account! Does anyone know why this would happen?

---------- Post added at 10:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 PM ----------

So I just figured something else out... every time I start and stop a custom 'activity' (the KDE Workspace feature) it seems to register another user as 'logged in'.

Originally Posted by KitchiRUs

Hi,

So I noticed something on my Fedora 17 KDE 64-bit machine.
When I ran the "uptime" command in terminal, this was the output -

[krishna@Kitchi ~]$ uptime
 21:58:00 up  5:58,  4 users,  load average: 0.28, 0.16, 0.09

But there is only one account setup on my computer, so I ran the "users" command, and this was the output

[krishna@Kitchi ~]$ users
krishna krishna krishna krishna

It appears that I've logged in four times with the same account! Does anyone know why this would happen?

---------- Post added at 10:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 PM ----------

So I just figured something else out... every time I start and stop a custom 'activity' (the KDE Workspace feature) it seems to register another user as 'logged in'.

How many terminals are open?, each one adds another user instance.

[KitchiRUs]

Okay, so I have a terminal widget installed, so there's always one terminal open on my desktop.
But once I killed that, only one user was 'logged off'. There were still remaining, and no open terminal.

Is this normal behaviour?

[hadrons123]

Is this normal behaviour?

yes.

man users

[george_toolan]

Try the "w" command which should give you more information.

[KitchiRUs]

So this was my output

 18:59:37 up  4:27,  4 users,  load average: 0.15, 0.22, 0.17
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
krishna  :0                        14:32   ?xdm?  17:19   0.07s /bin/sh /usr/bin/startkde
krishna  pts/0    :0               14:32    4:26m  0.04s  0.04s /bin/bash
krishna  pts/1    :0               14:32    4:26m  0.00s  6.13s kded4
krishna  pts/2    :0               18:58    0.00s  0.06s  0.00s w

That is quite interesting, thanks! I didn't know that KDE & bash logged in as separate users.

I can't understand why, though. Is that so I can open several instances of bash while I'm logged in?

[jpollard]

I assume you are wondering about he "what" column?

It is nothing more than the application that has the terminal open. It could be bash, but doesn't have to be.

In my case:

$ w
 09:37:02 up 2 days, 23:35,  5 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.19, 0.21
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
jesse    tty8     :1               07:49    2days  3:39   0.04s gdm-session-wor
jesse    pts/1    :1.0             07:50    1:03m  0.01s  0.01s bash
jesse    pts/2    :1.0             08:36   59:58   1:14   0.00s make
jesse    pts/3    :1.0             09:37    0.00s  0.00s  0.00s w

Bash is currently attached to pts/1. make is running on pts/2, and w on pts/3. What is attached depends on what is running. The "what" column is based on notion of the current process as others are waiting (such as the bash shell that I used to start the "w" command, or the shell that I used to start the "make").

---------- Post added at 09:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 AM ----------

BTW, the user count is just counting the number of recorded instances in the ump accounting file, Each terminal session (as in gterm/xterm/...term) records an entry. Oh, and if you use xterm it has an option "-ut" to disable recording an entry...

[KitchiRUs]

Oh, right. Cool!
Thanks for all the info!