LAST(1) General Commands Manual LAST(1)
NAME
last – indicate last logins of users and ttys
SYNOPSIS
last [--libxo] [-swy] [-d [[CC]YY][MMDD]hhmm[.SS]] [-f file] [-h host]
[-n maxrec] [-t tty] [user ...]
DESCRIPTION
The last utility will either list the sessions of specified users, ttys,
and hosts, in reverse time order, or list the users logged in at a
specified date and time. Each line of output contains the user name, the
tty from which the session was conducted, any hostname, the start and
stop times for the session, and the duration of the session. If the
session is still continuing or was cut short by a crash or shutdown, last
will so indicate.
The following options are available:
--libxo Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different
human and machine readable formats. See xo_parse_args(3) for
details on command line arguments.
-d date Specify the snapshot date and time. All users logged in at
the snapshot date and time will be reported. This may be
used with the -f option to derive the results from stored
utx.log files. When this argument is provided, all other
options except for -f and -n are ignored. The argument
should be in the form [[CC]YY][MMDD]hhmm[.SS] where each pair
of letters represents the following:
CC The first two digits of the year (the century).
YY The second two digits of the year. If YY is
specified, but CC is not, a value for YY
between 69 and 99 results in a CC value of 19.
Otherwise, a CC value of 20 is used.
MM Month of the year, from 1 to 12.
DD Day of the month, from 1 to 31.
hh Hour of the day, from 0 to 23.
mm Minute of the hour, from 0 to 59.
SS Second of the minute, from 0 to 60.
If the CC and YY letter pairs are not specified, the values
default to the current year. If the SS letter pair is not
specified, the value defaults to 0.
-f file Read the file file instead of the default, /var/log/utx.log.
-h host Host names may be names or internet numbers.
-n maxrec Limit the report to maxrec lines.
-s Report the duration of the login session in seconds, instead
of the default days, hours and minutes.
-t tty Specify the tty. Tty names may be given fully or
abbreviated, for example, “last -t 03” is equivalent to “last
-t tty03”.
-w Widen the duration field to show seconds, as well as the
default days, hours and minutes.
-y Report the year in the session start time.
If multiple arguments are given, and a snapshot time is not specified,
the information which applies to any of the arguments is printed, e.g.,
“last root -t console” would list all of “root's” sessions as well as all
sessions on the console terminal. If no users, hostnames or terminals
are specified, last prints a record of all logins and logouts.
The pseudo-user reboot logs in at reboots of the system, thus “last
reboot” will give an indication of mean time between reboot.
If last is interrupted, it indicates to what date the search has
progressed. If interrupted with a quit signal last indicates how far the
search has progressed and then continues.
FILES
/var/log/utx.log login data base
EXAMPLES
Show logins in pts/14 with the duration in seconds and limit the report
to two lines:
$ last -n2 -s -t pts/14
bob pts/1 Wed Dec 9 11:08 still logged in
bob pts/2 Mon Dec 7 20:10 - 20:23 ( 776)
Show active logins at ‘December 7th 20:23’ of the current year:
$ last -d 12072023
bob pts/1 Mon Dec 7 20:10 - 20:23 (00:12)
bob pts/6 Mon Dec 7 19:24 - 22:27 (03:03)
alice ttyv0 Mon Dec 7 19:18 - 22:27 (03:09)
SEE ALSO
lastcomm(1), getutxent(3), libxo(3), xo_parse_args(3), ac(8)
HISTORY
last utility first appeared in 1BSD.
AUTHORS
The original version was written by Howard P. Katseff; Keith Bostic
rewrote it in 1986/87 to add functionality and to improve code quality.
Philip Paeps added libxo(3) support in August 2018.
BUGS
If a login shell should terminate abnormally for some reason, it is
likely that a logout record will not be written to the utx.log file. In
this case, last will indicate the logout time as "shutdown".
macOS 15.2 January 9, 2021 macOS 15.2