I set up Mac OS X for my mom so that she can finally keep my little brother and sister from screwing things up (she gets confused if an icon moves a little). She would also like to know when they are using the computer. I figure logins have to be logged SOMEWHERE, right? I tried looking at some of the logs in /private/var/log/ and didn't find anything, but some logs like system.log seem to be overflowing with redundant information. Anybody know what specific lines (or better yet a regexp so I can pipe it through grep) to look for?
Where are logins logged?
- Thread starter jiblet
- Start date
Red Phoenix
Registered
Just use the last command in the terminal. This checks the /var/log/wtmp for all logins that are in that file (which should be for the current month, if the computer is being left on and the automatic monthly clean-up tasks are being run). To check for a specific person with the username "frank", you can type
last frank
and this will give the information for that specific person. You can also look at the past n times with the -n command. For example
last -5
shows the most recent 5 entries. These can be combined so that I can check the past five reboots and shutdowns with
last -5 reboot shutdown
If your mother doesn't want to deal with the Terminal.app, you can get OSX PowerAddOns Lite from VersionTracker, and then write a small AppleScript that runs the command and passes it along.
last frank
and this will give the information for that specific person. You can also look at the past n times with the -n command. For example
last -5
shows the most recent 5 entries. These can be combined so that I can check the past five reboots and shutdowns with
last -5 reboot shutdown
If your mother doesn't want to deal with the Terminal.app, you can get OSX PowerAddOns Lite from VersionTracker, and then write a small AppleScript that runs the command and passes it along.
