Is there a way to use some kinds of logs in order to monitor the programs my guest users use the most. I would basically like to monitor my son and see if he spends more time surfing or writing.

I am competent in C and a little in C++ so I would just like a place to start.

Talk to him.

quote from Dr.Phil: If you don't talk with him about stuff that doesn't matter, you can't talk with him about stuff that matters.

My first idea would be to (every n seconds) run ps, grep for his username and sed/awk out the duration of each process, and generate a neat report of the average lifetime of the processes.

But I've come to realise that the idea is flawed: I leave my programs running even when I'm not using them actively (i.e. they don't have focus). Which is why my system leaks memory

So, a place to start is probably to investigate how you can find out which program has focus. I guess that this would be wm-specific--I don't think X has a notion of focus.

The in my mind optimal solution would then be to install a callback hook everytime the user switches focus, get the new time, subtract the old, and add it to the time of the program switched away from.

Alternatively, just poll for current focus every n seconds.

Things to investigate: can he cheat your program with ssh w. x-forwarding and/or embedded/nested x-sessions?

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In any case, I hope he doesn't give you his consent (everybody deserves privacy), and I hope you don't do this without his consent.
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hth --Jonas

no I will not do this with out his consent. I am trying to set up something basically so I can keep my own logs. Personally as a parent I would like to know if my son is wasting time on a pc and wasting resources. overall i would like to monitor that. I dont want to monitor what ip addresses he is looking at or even what he is watching if he is watching a dvd. I just what to creat a log that would say that the browser was used 95% of the time and therefor I could set up my system to accomdate his needs for the browser. and rework his set up for that.

And our children are our responsibility and therefore we should monitor what they watch or do or we are failing them as parents. I often get tired of people saying it was TV that got my son on drugs or premarital sex or what ever. If you do not know what your child is into then you are to blame. and we have had those talks and I do talk with my son. This is just to find a way to monitor the system. not the content.

Take a deeep breath

I see how one can misunderstand my post--I'm not trying to question your abilities as a parent.

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in any case, did I give you a good place to start?

--Jonas

Look into BSD style process accounting, which will probably do everything you want to. Unfortunately, you may need to recompile your kernel to activate it.

Yes you did. And I do aprrieciate it very much. I am just trying to figure out what will be the best way to do that. I will also look into the BSD. Though the time subtraction would seem to be the best. Thankyou

I'd suggest that if your system supports process accounting `out of the box', use that.

But up to you.