lastcomm(1) — Linux manual page

LASTCOMM(1)              General Commands Manual             LASTCOMM(1)

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 com‐
       mands.  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 exam‐
       ple, 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 exam‐
       ple, 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 follow‐
       ing 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 try‐
              ing 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  Show PID and PPID of the process if acct version 3 format
              is supported by kernel.
       --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 ker‐
              nel)
       --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 account‐
       ing texinfo page by Susan Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>.

SEE ALSO

       last(1), acct(5)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the psacct (process accounting utilities)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the tarball acct-6.6.4.tar.gz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/acct/⟩ on 2024-06-14.  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in
       this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                             1995 October 31                 LASTCOMM(1)

Pages that refer to this page: acct(5), dump-acct(8), dump-utmp(8)

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