Command Reference Guide

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STANDARD Printed by: Nora Chuang [nchuang] STANDARD

/build/1111/BRICK/man1/!!!intro.1

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last(1) last(1)

NAME

last, lastb - indicate last logins of users and ttys

SYNOPSIS

/usr/bin/last [-R ][-number][-f ﬁle ][name ...] [tty ...]

/usr/bin/lastb [-R ][-number][-f ﬁle ][name ...] [tty ...]

DESCRIPTION

The last command searches backwards through the ﬁle /var/adm/wtmp (which contains a record of all

logins and logouts) for information about a user, a tty, or any group of users and ttys. Arguments specify

names of users or ttys of interest. The names of ttys can be given fully or abbreviated. For example, last

is the same as last tty0. If multiple arguments are given, the information that applies to any of the

arguments is printed. For example, last root console lists all of root’s sessions as well as all ses-

sions on the console terminal. The last command prints the sessions of the speciﬁed users and ttys, most

recent ﬁrst, indicating when the session began, the duration of the session, and the tty on which the session

took place. last indicates if the session is still in progress or if it was cut short by a reboot.

The pseudo-user reboot logs each time the system reboots. Thus,

last reboot is a useful command

for evaluating the relative time between system reboots.

last is interrupted, it indicates how far the search has progressed in wtmp. If interrupted by a quit

signal (generated by a Ctrl-\),

last indicates how far the search has progressed, then continues the

search.

The lastb command searches backwards through the database ﬁle /var/adm/btmp

to display bad

/var/adm/btmp

should be restricted to users with appropriate privileges

(owned by and readable only by

root) because it may contain password information.

Options

The last and lastb commands recognize the following options and arguments:

(none) If no arguments are speciﬁed, last prints a record of all logins and logouts in reverse

order, most recent ﬁrst.

-R When used with last and lastb, -R displays the user’s host name as it is stored in the

ﬁles /var/adm/wtmp and /var/adm/btmp

, respectively. The host name is displayed

between the tty name and the user’s login time.

-number Limits the report to number of lines.

-f file Use ﬁle as the name of the accounting ﬁle instead of /var/adm/wtmp

/var/adm/btmp .

AUTHOR

last was developed by the University of California, Berkeley and HP.

FILES

/var/adm/btmp Bad login database

/var/adm/wtmp Login database