USING UNIX: COLLECTED TRACES OF 168 USERS

Abstract

The task of collecting long-term data on real-life computer use is onerous. There is the technical difficulty of writing monitoring software, the social inertia of attracting individuals to the study, and the often overwhelming politics of obtaining an organization's permission for executing the study. To save other researchers the time and effort required to collect such data, this paper describes how command line data from 168 users of the ${UNIX sup 1}$ csh system was collected and organized. The accompanying magnetic tape includes all the data files.