How to Display the User's Login Status

Before You Begin
To use the logins command, you must become an administrator who is assigned either the User Management or the User Security rights profile. By default, the root role has this authorization. For more information, see Using Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Securing Users and Processes in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .

• Display a user's login status by using the logins command.

  # logins -x -l username

  –x

  Displays an extended set of login status information.
  

  –l username

  Displays the login status for the specified user. The variable username is a user's login name. Multiple login names are separated by commas.
  

  The logins command uses the appropriate password database to obtain a user's login status. The database can be the local /etc/passwd file, or a password database for the naming service. For more information, see the logins (1M) man page.
  

Example 3-1  Displaying a User's Login Status In the following example, the login status for the user jdoe is displayed.

# logins -x -l jdoe
jdoe       500     staff           10   Jaylee Jaye Doe
/home/jdoe
/bin/bash
PS 010103 10 7 -1

jdoe

Identifies the user's login name.

500

Identifies the user ID (UID).

staff

Identifies the user's primary group.

10

Identifies the group ID (GID).

Jaylee Jaye Doe

Identifies the comment.

/home/jdoe

Identifies the user's home directory.

/bin/bash

Identifies the login shell.

PS 010170 10 7 -1

Specifies the password aging information:

• Last date that the password was changed
  
• Number of days that are required between changes
  
• Number of days before a change is required
  
• Warning period

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

last

OR

last [UserNameHere]

OR

last [option] [UserNameHere]

Example: Display Linux user last login

To display when a user named ‘vivek’ last logged in to the system, type:
$ last vivek
$ last vivek | less
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: last command in action on my Debian base nas server

The output in this example tell us when user vivek last logged in. The output will go back for several months or more as last command searches back through the file /var/log/wtmp and displays a list of all users logged in (and out) since that file was created.

Display a list of recent system use for all users

Simply type the last command:
$ last
OR
$ last | less
Sample outputs taken from my RHEL based server:

root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Mon Jan 27 06:26   still logged in   
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Mon Jan 27 03:37 - 06:26  (02:48)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sun Jan 26 02:47 - 09:28  (06:40)    
root     pts/4        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan 25 11:02 - 11:02  (00:00)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan 25 10:15 - 13:12  (02:56)    
root     pts/4        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan 25 06:01 - 06:32  (00:31)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan 25 03:08 - 09:04  (05:55)    
root     pts/4        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan 25 01:06 - 03:18  (02:11)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Fri Jan 24 23:59 - 02:11  (02:12)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Fri Jan 24 05:30 - 08:39  (03:08)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Thu Jan 23 04:22 - 05:41  (01:19)    
....
...
...
root     pts/1        10.1.6.120       Sun Jan  5 11:09 - 14:29  (03:20)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sun Jan  5 10:05 - 12:19  (02:14)    
reboot   system boot  2.6.32-431.3.1.e Sun Jan  5 10:02 - 06:52 (21+20:50)  
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sun Jan  5 09:58 - down   (00:00)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sun Jan  5 03:33 - 05:45  (02:12)    
root     pts/1        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan  4 15:06 - 17:28  (02:21)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan  4 13:46 - 15:58  (02:11)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Sat Jan  4 05:05 - 07:16  (02:11)    
root     pts/1        10.1.6.120       Fri Jan  3 14:29 - 15:44  (01:15)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Fri Jan  3 13:20 - 15:32  (02:11)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Thu Jan  2 05:19 - 05:32  (00:13)    
root     pts/0        10.1.6.120       Tue Dec 31 13:57 - 16:06  (02:09)    
 
wtmp begins Tue Dec 31 13:57:23 2013