Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 2 43
Installing and Configuring Internet Services
Configuring rwhod, the Server for rwho and ruptime
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.
1. In the /etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons file, set the RWHOD variable
to 1.
2. 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).