Tracking Who Has Logged Into a Server?

leond · May 24, 2011, 9:51am

I am running Solaris 10 on a variety of SUN servers. I need to be able to tell who has logged into the server.

Is this info kept in any of the logs on the system?

Thanks,
LeonD

pludi · May 24, 2011, 9:57am

leond · May 24, 2011, 11:25am

Thanks pludi, that's the info I need.

Now if I needed to keep historical data, I'm assuming the easiest way would be to put list in a script and have it create unique files at regular intervals. Is that correct?

Also, when I do a list on one of my servers, it only goes back one week. Is there somewhere I can find data that is similar but older?

Thanks again,
LeonD

bartus11 · May 24, 2011, 11:52am

It is possible that /var/adm/wtmpx file (database read by last command) got corrupted. Check man wtmpfix for a way to fix it.

methyl · May 24, 2011, 12:06pm

Your administrator may be ageing the wtmpx file.

leond · May 24, 2011, 1:37pm

How much data should be in the wtmpx database? More than one week?

In this case, I am the administrator. We're basically using a straight install of Solaris 10. So if it's being aged, it's not on purpose.

Thanks for the help,
LeonD

bartus11 · May 24, 2011, 1:49pm

It should contain data from the day of the first boot after installation.

leond · May 24, 2011, 4:15pm

Will it "refresh" after every time the server is rebooted? Or should all the data be in there since the OS was installed?

bartus11 · May 24, 2011, 4:20pm

All the data should be in the file. This is the reason why on some servers this file can grow to enormous size.