last(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | TIME FORMATS | FILES | NOTES | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON

LAST, LASTB(1)                User Commands               LAST, LASTB(1)

NAME         top

       last, lastb - show a listing of last logged in users

SYNOPSIS         top

       last [options] [username...] [tty...]
       lastb [options] [username...] [tty...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       last searches back through the /var/log/wtmp file (or the file
       designated by the -f option) and displays a list of all users
       logged in (and out) since that file was created.  One or more
       usernames and/or ttys can be given, in which case last will show
       only the entries matching those arguments.  Names of ttys can be
       abbreviated, thus last 0 is the same as last tty0.

       When catching a SIGINT signal (generated by the interrupt key,
       usually control-C) or a SIGQUIT signal, last will show how far it
       has searched through the file; in the case of the SIGINT signal
       last will then terminate.

       The pseudo user reboot logs in each time the system is rebooted.
       Thus last reboot will show a log of all the reboots since the log
       file was created.

       lastb is the same as last, except that by default it shows a log
       of the /var/log/btmp file, which contains all the bad login
       attempts.

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --hostlast
              Display the hostname in the last column.  Useful in
              combination with the --dns option.

       -d, --dns
              For non-local logins, Linux stores not only the host name
              of the remote host, but its IP number as well.  This
              option translates the IP number back into a hostname.

       -f, --file file
              Tell last to use a specific file instead of /var/log/wtmp.
              The --file option can be given multiple times, and all of
              the specified files will be processed.

       -F, --fulltimes
              Print full login and logout times and dates.

       -i, --ip
              Like --dns , but displays the host's IP number instead of
              the name.

       -number
       -n, --limit number
              Tell last how many lines to show.

       -p, --present time
              Display the users who were present at the specified time.
              This is like using the options --since and --until
              together with the same time.

       -R, --nohostname
              Suppresses the display of the hostname field.

       -s, --since time
              Display the state of logins since the specified time.
              This is useful, e.g., to easily determine who was logged
              in at a particular time.  The option is often combined
              with --until.

       -t, --until time
              Display the state of logins until the specified time.

       --time-format format
              Define the output timestamp format to be one of notime,
              short, full, or iso.  The notime variant will not print
              any timestamps at all, short is the default, and full is
              the same as the --fulltimes option.  The iso variant will
              display the timestamp in ISO-8601 format.  The ISO format
              contains timezone information, making it preferable when
              printouts are investigated outside of the system.

       -w, --fullnames
              Display full user names and domain names in the output.

       -x, --system
              Display the system shutdown entries and run level changes.

TIME FORMATS         top

       The options that take the time argument understand the following
       formats:

       YYYYMMDDhhmmss
       YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
       YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm     (seconds will be set to 00)
       YYYY-MM-DD           (time will be set to 00:00:00)
       hh:mm:ss             (date will be set to today)
       hh:mm                (date will be set to today, seconds to 00)
       now
       yesterday            (time is set to 00:00:00)
       today                (time is set to 00:00:00)
       tomorrow             (time is set to 00:00:00)
       +5min
       -5days

FILES         top

       /var/log/wtmp
       /var/log/btmp

NOTES         top

       The files wtmp and btmp might not be found.  The system only logs
       information in these files if they are present.  This is a local
       configuration issue.  If you want the files to be used, they can
       be created with a simple touch(1) command (for example, touch
       /var/log/wtmp).

AUTHORS         top

       Miquel van Smoorenburg ⟨miquels@cistron.nl⟩

SEE ALSO         top

       login(1), wtmp(5), init(8), shutdown(8)

AVAILABILITY         top

       The last command is part of the util-linux package and is
       available from Linux Kernel Archive 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project.  Information about the project can be found
       at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2020-12-18.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2020-12-17.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux                    October 2013                LAST, LASTB(1)