Unix Commands - 2
In this post I am posting other useful unix commands.
w — tells you who’s logged in, and what they’re doing. Especially useful: the ‘idle’ part. This allows you to see whether they’re actually sitting there typing away at their keyboards right at the moment.
who — tells you who’s logged on, and where they’re coming from. Useful if you’re looking for someone who’s actually physically in the same building as you, or in some other particular location.
finger username — gives you lots of information about that user, e.g. when they last read their mail and whether they’re logged in. Often people put other practical information, such as phone numbers and addresses, in a file called .plan. This information is also displayed by ‘finger’.
last -1 username — tells you when the user last logged on and off and from where. Without any options, last will give you a list of everyone’s logins.
talk username — lets you have a (typed) conversation with another user
write username — lets you exchange one-line messages with another user
elm — lets you send e-mail messages to people around the world (and, of course, read them). It’s not the only mailer you can use, but the one we recommend. See the elm page, and find out about the departmental mailing lists (which you can also find in /user/linguistics/helpfile).
