"exit" vs. "X-ing" out of a terminal

[Aaron Gaudio]

On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 10:17 -0400, Clint Harshaw wrote:
> Clint Harshaw wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Some time ago, I posted a question about mysterious users that showed up 
> >  when I would do a "who" at the prompt. I have a question related to 
> > that issue. Is there any difference in typing "exit" to stop a terminal 
> > vs. clicking on the "X" in that terminal's window? I wonder if these 
> > extra users are due to my "X-ing" out of a terminal rather than typing 
> > "exit" at the prompt.
> > 
> > Is there any harm done by "X-ing" out of the terminal?
> > 
> > Is there a proper way to retrieve those users remaining from a prior 
> > X-out so that I could "exit" from them? (short of rebooting, I can't 
> > seem to remove the extraneous users.)
> > 
> > Clint
> 
> My mailbox filled up and I missed the reply to this, but was able to 
> read it on marc.theaimsgroup.com's archive. I am confusing users with 
> open terminal sessions -- I'm the only user on this home desktop system.
> 
> When I ran who after init 1 I get this response;
> 
> charshaw pts/4        Jul 26 17:59 (:0.0)
> charshaw pts/11       Jul 26 21:52 (:0.0)
> charshaw pts/12       Jul 26 21:53 (:0.0)
> charshaw pts/16       Jul 27 10:09 (:0.0)
> 
> when I exit init 1 and log back in, w provides me with this information:
> 
>   10:11:48 up 21:47,  6 users,  load average: 2.10, 0.96, 0.43
> USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
> charshaw :0       -                10:11   ?xdm?  21.03s  0.62s 
> /usr/bin/gnome-
> charshaw pts/17   :0.0             10:11    0.00s  0.04s  0.00s w
> 
> are those pts/XX "users" terminal sessions that I "X"'d out of rather 
> than typing "exit"? Is this just a non-issue that I should just get used 
> to seeing?

I suspect what is happening is that you are causing X to get killed
unceremoniously, so it doesn't have a chance to update /var/run/utmp,
which is what the 'who' command uses to get its information. You
probably don't need to get used to seeing it, if you log out of X
properly before switching init level.