RWho
This program is similar to the who command, but maintains a central
list of currently logged in accounts across multiple servers.
$ rwho
USER HOST LINE FROM
grawity ember {45} (tmux)
land pts/3 2a06:e881:108:2:64e6:9d86:856:b93c
sky pts/0 2a02:7b40:50d1:hjkl::1
star {13} (tmux)
nobody ember pts/14 2001:778:e27f:0:9618:82ff:fe38:e480
star pts/9 star.nullroute.eu.org
star pts/1 78-59-7-25.static.zebra.lt
It was originally written in mid-2000s for a public-access Linux "shell account" network (similar to the ~tilde clubs~ of nowadays), back when you still had this sense of community around it... and when letting other people know your IP address didn't matter so much.
Nowadays, of course, it really shouldn't be used without carefully considering the privacy implications.
RWho was greatly inspired by the BSD Unix rwho, though has no direct
relationship to it (except for the name).
Features
Data is stored on a central server (currently – in a MySQL database), with hosts sending live and periodic updates.
-
Hosts use HTTP Basic authentication over TLS (Kerberos is also planned). Originally, in the spirit of Unix rwho, no authentication was done at all.
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"Agents" exist for Linux, BSDs, and Windows Server.
The information can be displayed through a fancy web interface or through the traditional Finger protocol. See it in action via HTTP or Finger.
- There is support for showing the user's
~/.planfile, either from the filesystem or even from LDAP.
Contents
agent/– new agent service for Linux (requires Python 3)agent-linux/– old agent service for Linux and BSDs (requires Perl 5)agent-win32/– old agent service for Windows XP/2003 (requires pywin32)server-php/– API server for PHPui-finger/– a text interface for the Finger protocol (inetd-style)ui-web/– a slightly fancy HTML interface for Mozilla 1.7 and Internet Explorer 5 (requires PHP 7.4)