I have setup a ftp server on my red hat 7.2 server

I have given some friends accounts with diff permissions.


Is there any way to see who is on my machine at any given time?

Or do you know of any ftp log files?

who -q

should print all users logged in.

you can also check your logs usually setup in the /var/log directory
but that won't give you who is logged in at that specific time.

As far as I know, who -q will only show users logged on using a shell.

If you want to see who's using your ftp server, you should read the documentation of the server you are using.
Most servers (can) log sessions to a file in /var/log, but there are also some that can show more detailed information through a special utility. Ncftpd for example has one called ncftpd_spy which, when called as "ncftpd_spy watch" will show you every command any user executes on your ftp.

And if you do have to use the log to see activity, you can also use tail -f /var/log/filename which will periodically (once per sec or so) check if anything was written to the file and then print it to std out.

Or you could just do a 'ps aux' and you should see your friends usernames listed as owners of the ftp processes.

~Mark

last will do it also.

you can also view the file /var/log/message