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Last User Login Script

I am trying to write a script that will tell when a user on a network of 90 computers last logged in. Each Computer has its own wtmp file that holds last login information. The password file for the network is stored on a central computer and all the computers use NIS and NFS for file sharing. I want the script to go to each computer on the network (I have a list of computers it will read from called computer.list) and have it go in and tell me when the user last logged in on the network.

b2pi

You could certainly do this, but it would be wrong, from both efficiency and security standpoints. Instead, let me suggest that you have each user run a perl script upon login (via the global login files, depending on shell).

That script will connect with a server running on some designated machine (make sure to set the name of the machine in an environment variable so that it can be easily changed later), and hand off the name of the user and the name of the machine being logged into to the server.

The server script, also, of course, written in perl, will simply store the current time, username and machine name. You'll probably want to use a berkeley db file for this.

You'll find an example server and client in the camel.

Enslaver

ASKER

With a network of 1000+ users that would be too tough. And I am not concerned about security. I have already thought this through and found my way to be the best way to do it.

ahoffmann

can you finger your user at all hosts from computer.list?
Then it could be done.

Enslaver

ASKER

Nope, fingerd only accepts requests from localhost.

ahoffmann

Would be a hard job then ;-|

If fingerd is somehow secure, I assume that wtmp is not accesable from network too.

So you either must export your wtmp to a public (network-) accessable directory -not very clever-, or use a solution as b2pi suggested -you rejected-, or you do it similar as b2pi as follows:

each login writes to a public accessable file a notification line
a program reads this file at each login to get requiered information (you don't need a client/server solution for this)

Enslaver

ASKER

Ok well my goal is to find out who to date hasnt logged in in 3 months. Not find out 3 months from now, and all wtmp's are accessable through nfs because we have each of the computers mounted on /net/computername

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leendert

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