LASTCOMM

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 1995 October 31
Page Index

NAME

lastcomm - print out information about previously executed commands.

SYNOPSIS

lastcomm: [ command-name ... ]
[ user-name ... ]
[ terminal-name ... ]
[ OPTION ... ]

DESCRIPTION

lastcomm prints out information about previously executed commands. If no arguments are specified, lastcomm will print info about all of the commands in acct (the record file). If called with one or more of command-name, user-name, or terminal-name, only records containing those items will be displayed. For example, to find out which users used command `a.out' and which users were logged into `tty0', type:

lastcomm a.out tty0

This will print any entry for which `a.out' or `tty0' matches in any of the record's fields (command, name, or terminal). If you want to find only items that match *all* of the arguments on the command line, you must use the '-strict-match' option. For example, to list all of the executions of command a.out by user root on terminal tty0, type:

lastcomm --strict-match --command a.out --user root --tty tty0

The order of the arguments is not important.

For each entry the following information is printed:
   + command name of the process
   + flags, as recorded by the system accounting routines:
        S -- command executed by super-user
        F -- command executed after a fork but without a following exec
        C -- command run in PDP-11 compatibility mode (VAX only)
        D -- command terminated with the generation of a core file
        X -- command was terminated with the signal SIGTERM
   + the name of the user who ran the process
   + time the process started

OPTIONS

--strict-match: Print only entries that match *all* of the arguments on the command line.
--print-controls: Print control characters.
--user name: List records for user with name. This is useful if you're trying to match a username that happens to be the same as a command (e.g., ed ).
--command name: List records for command name.
--tty name: List records for tty name.
--forwards: Read file forwards instead of backwards. This avoids trying to seek on the file and can be used to read from a pipe. This must be specified prior to any -f arguments.
-f filename, --file filename: Read from the file filename instead of acct. A filename of "-" will result in reading from stdin. This must either be the first -f option, or --forwards must precede all -f options.
--ahz hz: Use this flag to tell the program what AHZ should be (in hertz). This option is useful if you are trying to view an acct file created on another machine which has the same byte order and file format as your current machine, but has a different value for AHZ.
-p, --show-paging: Print paging statistics.
--pid: Add pid of the process and pid of the process parent to the output (pid is the last but one and parent pid the last column). These values are shown only when they are generated by acct function (depends on the version of kernel)
--debug: Print verbose internal information.
-V, --version: Print the version number of lastcomm.
-h, --help: Prints the usage string and default locations of system files to standard output and exits.

FILES

acct

The system wide process accounting file. See acct(5) (or pacct(5)) for further details. /var/log/account

: This directory contains pacct files which contain the binary process accounting data as written by the kernel.

AUTHOR

The GNU accounting utilities were written by Noel Cragg <noel@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. The man page was adapted from the accounting texinfo page by Susan Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>.