i require a utility that identifies all users currently logged into the system. It should create a file called logfile which contains a list of usernames together with a count of how many login sessions they are currently running, for example

coc9io : 1
hbh8jd : 3
dg7hy : 1
root : 4

it should also print to a standard output message to the form

Total User: hbh8jd (3 sessions)

for each user with more than 2 current login sessions.

if possible can you you use comments so that i understand the code better

thanks very much

james bell

a possible way to do the work : who + awk

Try ...

echo ' ' >> logfile
date >> logfile
for name in `who | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort -u`
do
name_count=`who | grep -c ${name}`
if [ ${name_count} -gt 2 ]
then
echo ${name}':'${name_count} >> logfile
echo 'Total User:'${name}' ('${name_count}' sessions)'
fi
done

This is done in sh. The only problem that I can see, and don't quite know how to correct would be if you have someone with a name like jon and then a jones, as jon would be counted as jones as well.

As for the commands who gives you a list of each person's sessions. Since their name is the first column in who, when you cut the response, you only want the first column (-f1), and it is delimited with a space (-d' '). The sort -u makes sure that you only get the one instance for each person. Without it, you would get something like:

jones:3
jones:3
jones:3

Not what you want, I'm sure. After you have your list of users, you need to count each one. So, re do the who command, and pipe it through grep -c (line count). Compare that against what you want (you said more than 2 entries, so I did the -gt 2), and echo out what you want to see.

Oh, and the logfile. I didn't know if you wanted it to be a running logfile, or what, so I made it so that it puts a blank line, and then the date, and the the list of users. Handy if you are wanting to track when folk are on the most or whatever. If this isn't what you want, then I would drop the date command, and change the echo above the for loop to

echo > logfile

> will cause the file to be re-created, while >> causes the file to be appended to.

Hope this helps.

Hobbletoe

Edit: Forgot the logfile ... changed a few other things.

A possible solution with who + awk

just says Permission denied

not sure why i copied and pasted in

Use 'grep -wc' ?

Another method would be to use who + cut + uniq +awk...
The above is untested as I don't have access to a Unix box at the minute, so I hope it works. Personally, I prefer JP's pure awk solution but this might be a little easier to get your head round to start with!

You can break the pipeline down to see how this works if you want...

who
who | cut -f1 -d' '
who | cut -f1 -d' ' | uniq -c

Shell considers that the command name is formed by awk + awk script, this can happen if the quote is misplaced, for example : who | 'awk
Verify and mofify your script :

hi m8 this code works fine

who | cut -f1 -d' ' | uniq -c | awk '$1>1{print "Total User: "$2" ("$1" sessions)"}{print $2" : "$1 > "logfile"}'

only trouble is i do not understand the $1 and $2

where do they come from and what do they do ?

thanks david w

Within awk program, $n stands for field n of record read from input file.
The output of the 'uniq -c' command in in the form :
number_of_records record
So, in the awk program, $1 is number_of_records and $2 is record (in fact user).

I think that you need to add a sort command in the pipe :