lastlog(8) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| NOTE \| CONFIGURATION \| FILES \| CAVEATS \| COLOPHON

LASTLOG(8)              System Management Commands             LASTLOG(8)

NAME top

       lastlog - reports the most recent login of all users or of a given
       user

SYNOPSIS top


       lastlog [options]

DESCRIPTION top

       lastlog formats and prints the contents of the last login log
       /var/log/lastlog file. The login-name, port, and last login time
       will be printed. The default (no flags) causes lastlog entries to
       be printed, sorted by their order in /etc/passwd.

OPTIONS top

       The options which apply to the lastlog command are:

       -b, --before DAYS
           Print only lastlog records older than DAYS.

       -C, --clear
           Clear lastlog record of a user. This option can be used only
           together with -u (--user)).

       -h, --help
           Display help message and exit.

       -R, --root CHROOT_DIR
           Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the
           configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only
           absolute paths are supported.

       -S, --set
           Set lastlog record of a user to the current time. This option
           can be used only together with -u (--user)).

       -t, --time DAYS
           Print the lastlog records more recent than DAYS.

       -u, --user LOGIN|RANGE
           Print the lastlog record of the specified user(s).

           The users can be specified by a login name, a numerical user
           ID, or a RANGE of users. This RANGE of users can be specified
           with a min and max values (UID_MIN-UID_MAX), a max value
           (-UID_MAX), or a min value (UID_MIN-).

       -a
           Print the lastlog records of the users that have logged in at
           least once. Excludes records for users with '**Never logged
           in**'.

       If the user has never logged in the message ** Never logged in**
       will be displayed instead of the port and time.

       Only the entries for the current users of the system will be
       displayed. Other entries may exist for users that were deleted
       previously.

NOTE top

       The lastlog file is a database which contains info on the last
       login of each user. You should not rotate it. It is a sparse file,
       so its size on the disk is usually much smaller than the one shown
       by "ls -l" (which can indicate a really big file if you have in
       passwd users with a high UID). You can display its real size with
       "ls -s".

CONFIGURATION top

       The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change
       the behavior of this tool:

       LASTLOG_UID_MAX (number)
           Highest user ID number for which the lastlog entries should be
           updated. As higher user IDs are usually tracked by remote user
           identity and authentication services there is no need to
           create a huge sparse lastlog file for them.

           No LASTLOG_UID_MAX option present in the configuration means
           that there is no user ID limit for writing lastlog entries.

FILES top

       /var/log/lastlog
           Database times of previous user logins.

CAVEATS top

       Large gaps in UID numbers will cause the lastlog program to run
       longer with no output to the screen (i.e. if in lastlog database
       there is no entries for users with UID between 170 and 800 lastlog
       will appear to hang as it processes entries with UIDs 171-799).

       Having high UIDs can create problems when handling the
       /var/log/lastlog with external tools. Although the actual file is
       sparse and does not use too much space, certain applications are
       not designed to identify sparse files by default and may require a
       specific option to handle them.

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, send it to
       pkg-shadow-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-08-10.)  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

shadow-utils 4.18.0             08/11/2025                     LASTLOG(8)

Pages that refer to this page: login(1), lslogins(1), lastlog2(8)