The
last
utility will either list the sessions of specified
users,
ttys,
and
hosts,
in reverse time order,
or list the users logged in at a specified snapshot date and time
in reverse time order.
Each line of output contains
the user name, the tty from which the session was conducted, any
hostname, the start and stop times for the session, and the duration
of the session.
If the session is still continuing or was cut short by
a crash or shutdown,
last
will so indicate.
The options are as follows:
-c
Calculates the total time displayed and prints it after the output.
-d date
Specify the snapshot date and time.
All users logged in at the snapshot date and time will
be reported.
This may be used with the
-f
option to derive the results from stored wtmp files.
When this argument is provided, all other options except for
-f
and
-n
are ignored.
The argument should be in the form
“[[[CC]YY]MMDD]hhmm[.SS]”
where each pair of letters represents the following:
CC
The first two digits of the year (the century).
YY
The second two digits of the year.
If
“YY”
is specified, but
“CC”
is not, a value for
“YY”
between 69 and 99 results in a
“CC”
value of 19.
Otherwise, a
“CC”
value of 20 is used.
MM
Month of the year, from 1 to 12.
DD
Day of the month, from 1 to 31.
hh
Hour of the day, from 0 to 23.
mm
Minute of the hour, from 0 to 59.
SS
Second of the minute, from 0 to 61.
All but the
“hh”
and
“mm”
letter pairs are optional.
If the
“CC”
and
“YY”
letter pairs are not specified, the values default to the current
year.
If the
“MM”
and
“DD”
letter pairs are not specified, the values default to the current
month and day.
If the
“SS”
letter pair is not specified, the value defaults to 0.
-f file
last
reads the file
file
instead of the default,
/var/log/wtmp.
-h host
host
names may be names or internet numbers.
-n number
Limits the report to
number
lines.
The format
-
is also supported,
but is deprecated.
-s
Display time values in seconds since the Epoch, instead of formatted dates.
-T
Display better time information, including seconds.
-t tty
Specify the
tty.
tty names may be given fully or abbreviated, for example,
last-t 03
is
equivalent to
last-t tty03.
If
multiple arguments are given, and a snapshot time is not specified, the
information which applies to any of the
arguments is printed, e.g.,
lastroot -t console
would list all of
root
sessions as well as all sessions on the console terminal.
If no users, hostnames, or terminals are specified,
last
prints a record of
all logins and logouts.
The pseudo-user
“reboot”
logs in at reboots of the system; thus
lastreboot
will give an indication of mean time between reboot.
If
last
is interrupted, it indicates to what date the search has
progressed.
If interrupted with a quit signal,
last
indicates how
far the search has progressed and then continues.