[SOLVED] How to track the user sessions

hiarunn · 09-30-2009, 08:31 AM

I'm using LDAP and kerberos for user authentication. All I want to know is how to track the users currently logged on from a common location. I was thinking of having a script to write the $USER,$HOSTNAME,login/logout time, hours used etc on a NFS mount, but don't know where to call the script so that it will be executed whenever an user logs in / logs out. I'm using Gnome desktop manager.

Thanks in advance.

--
Arun

half_life1052 · 09-30-2009, 09:54 PM

If you want to track who is logged in to your machine, just use the "w" command. To keep it updating you would use a command such as "watch -n2 w". This will show who is logged in, and what they are doing. It will update every 2 seconds "-n2" . To find out historically who has logged in, the "last" command will help you.

hiarunn · 10-01-2009, 01:00 AM

The command "w" or "last" is useful when you want to know who is currently logged into a particular system. But in my setup there are 250+ workstations. I should be able to see who logged into to each system. The output of the script/cmd should be something like below

Host User Login_time logout_time
------------------------------------
host1 userA 10:30 Still logged in
host2 userB 09.15 12:10
host3 userX 11.30 Still logged in

This should get updated everytime a user login/logout.

hiarunn · 10-07-2009, 09:02 AM

I found the way to do this. I wrote a simple shell script to log the hostname, user name and login/logout time to a plain text file and append the lines to /etc/X11/gdm/PostLogin/Default file to log when a user logs in and /etc/X11/gdm/PostSession/Default can be used when a user quits the session. The information can be directed to a text file on the network mount or to a remote database.