Newsgroups: news.admin
Path: utzoo!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman)
Subject: Re: Arbitron "Users" count is very wrong under BSD
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Date: Sun, 24-Jan-88 20:39:19 EST
Summary: you can make a start at figuring out "real" users
Message-ID: <1988Jan24.203920.24826@lsuc.uucp>
References: <15538@onfcanim.UUCP> <247@bacchus.DEC.COM> <181@wundt.psy.vu.nl>
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto

In article <181@wundt.psy.vu.nl> wundt@psy.vu.nl (Wundt Administrator) writes:
>There are several suggestions given other than last | sort
>to count the number of users.
>
>One of these requires that "active" users be grouped within
>a contiguous range of uid numbers, but you can sort.

That's OK, but a bit magical, and apt to be lost track of
at some point.  Better is to look into the last field of
/etc/passwd, and do something such as assuming everyone
without either a null entry (implying /bin/sh) or /bin/csh
is a non-real user.  That'll take care of uucico processes
and other non-shell users.

Of course, the various names for shells on your site may
vary from being just sh and csh.

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
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