RWHOD(8)                FreeBSD System Manager's Manual               RWHOD(8)

NAME
     rwhod - system status server

SYNOPSIS
     rwhod [-i] [-p] [-l] [-m [ttl]]

DESCRIPTION
     The rwhod utility is the server which maintains the database used by the
     rwho(1) and ruptime(1) programs.  Its operation is predicated on the
     ability to broadcast or multicast messages on a network.

     The rwhod utility operates as both a producer and consumer of status
     information, unless the -l (listen mode) option is specified, in which
     case it acts as a consumer only.  As a producer of information it
     periodically queries the state of the system and constructs status
     messages which are broadcasted or multicasted on a network.  As a
     consumer of information, it listens for other rwhod servers' status
     messages, validating them, then recording them in a collection of files
     located in the directory /var/rwho.

     The following options are available:

     -i      Enable insecure mode, which causes rwhod to ignore the source
             port on incoming packets.

     -p      Ignore all POINTOPOINT interfaces.  This is useful if you do not
             wish to keep dial on demand interfaces permanently active.

     -l      Enable listen mode, which causes rwhod to not broadcast any
             information.  This allows you to monitor other machines' rwhod
             information, without broadcasting your own.

     -m [ttl]
             Cause rwhod to use IP multicast (instead of broadcast) on all
             interfaces that have the IFF_MULTICAST flag set in their "ifnet"
             structs (excluding the loopback interface).  The multicast
             reports are sent with a time-to-live of 1, to prevent forwarding
             beyond the directly-connected subnet(s).

             If the optional ttl argument is supplied with the -m flag, rwhod
             will send IP multicast datagrams with a time-to-live of ttl, via
             a SINGLE interface rather than all interfaces.  ttl must be
             between 0 and 32 (or MAX_MULTICAST_SCOPE).  Note that -m 1 is
             different from -m, in that -m 1 specifies transmission on one
             interface only.

             When -m is used without a ttl argument, the program accepts
             multicast rwhod reports from all multicast-capable interfaces.
             If a ttl argument is given, it accepts multicast reports from
             only one interface, the one on which reports are sent (which may
             be controlled via the host's routing table).  Regardless of the
             -m option, the program accepts broadcast or unicast reports from
             all interfaces.  Thus, this program will hear the reports of old,
             non-multicasting rwhods, but, if multicasting is used, those old
             rwhods will not hear the reports generated by this program.

     The server transmits and receives messages at the port indicated in the
     ``who'' service specification; see services(5).  The messages sent and
     received, are of the form:

           struct  outmp {
                   char    out_line[8];            /* tty name */
                   char    out_name[8];            /* user id */
                   long    out_time;               /* time on */
           };

           struct  whod {
                   char    wd_vers;
                   char    wd_type;
                   char    wd_fill[2];
                   int     wd_sendtime;
                   int     wd_recvtime;
                   char    wd_hostname[32];
                   int     wd_loadav[3];
                   int     wd_boottime;
                   struct  whoent {
                           struct  outmp we_utmp;
                           int     we_idle;
                   } wd_we[1024 / sizeof (struct whoent)];
           };

     All fields are converted to network byte order prior to transmission.
     The load averages are as calculated by the w(1) program, and represent
     load averages over the 5, 10, and 15 minute intervals prior to a server's
     transmission; they are multiplied by 100 for representation in an
     integer.  The host name included is that returned by the gethostname(3)
     system call, with any trailing domain name omitted.  The array at the end
     of the message contains information about the users logged in to the
     sending machine.  This information includes the contents of the entry
     from the user accounting database for each non-idle terminal line and a
     value indicating the time in seconds since a character was last received
     on the terminal line.

     Messages received by the rwho server are discarded unless they originated
     at an rwho server's port or the -i option was specified.  In addition, if
     the host's name, as specified in the message, contains any unprintable
     ASCII characters, the message is discarded.  Valid messages received by
     rwhod are placed in files named whod.hostname in the directory /var/rwho.
     These files contain only the most recent message, in the format described
     above.

     Status messages are generated approximately once every 3 minutes.

SEE ALSO
     ruptime(1), rwho(1)

HISTORY
     The rwhod utility appeared in 4.2BSD.

BUGS
     Status information should be sent only upon request rather than
     continuously.  People often interpret the server dying or network
     communication failures as a machine going down.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6         August 8, 2017         FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6