Bashscripts.org

Ok, so I wrote a stupid script to automatically take the output of the 'last' command and put it in a text file so I can monitor the login/ log out information of users on a network. I need it to do a bit more for me though. I was thinking I could either automate it to run every 6 hours and keep that text file updated. Or put the original script on all the client machines, and set a script on the server to automatically execute all the scripts on the clients and have the information outputted in a text file contained on the server. What I'm trying to do is keep a running log of all the login/out times without having to use terminal everytime I want to check these things. Any and all help is very very much appreciated.

I would write the script on the server and have that script go through a for loop of all the clients you want to connect to (via ssh), run the 'last' command, and output that to a log file. That way, you don't need to have your script in every client machine. Then setup a cronjob at whatever interval you want to email you the output of that log.

-twantrd

Are you just trying to log logins and logouts for a single server? I'm confused about where the client machines come in... Unless you want to log logins on each client machine as well...

Depending on your distribution, logins and logouts are typically logged in /var/log/messages, or /var/log/auth.log.

If you are tracking logins on several machines and want to keep a central log, you may want to look into remote syslog. That way you could have syslog do all the work, and there would be no need for a script at all.

Let us know if you still need help! I'm probably completely missing the point!