On 16Jul2007 05:40, Robert C Wittig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | Felix T. Gomez, Jr. wrote: | > Last command is very useful but it would be better if | > I will know what file does this information resides? | > | > What I am thinking is if the data resides in a file, I | > could get it by making a perl script that will read a | > "log file" and parse it line by line just like how i | > could see it when I type the "last" command. | | 'last' extracts its information from /var/log/wtmp as indicated in the | man page for the 'last' command I referred you to, but unfortunately, | 'wtmp' is a binary file, which cannot be directly read, which accounts | for the existence of 'last', which is the utility created to read from | 'wtmp'.
You can easily write a C program to read the utmp and wtmp files (they are the same format, with utmp being the current logins and wtmp being log of logins and logouts). See "man 5 utmp". It would be easy to have this C program write text output and run like "tail -f" (or just read from "tail -f /var/log/wtmp" with a pipe). I used to have just such a program hooked up to list my friends in my terminal's status line as they logged in and out (a multiuser shared system). Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ EMACS: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift To unsubscribe from this list, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] & you will be removed. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
