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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | TIME FORMATS | FILES | NOTES | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY |
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LAST(1) User Commands LAST(1)
last, lastb - show a listing of last logged in users
last [options] [username|tty]...
lastb [options] [username|tty]...
last searches back through the /var/log/wtmp file (or the file
given with the -f option) and displays a list of all users who
logged in (and out) since that file was created. One or more
usernames and/or ttys can be given, in which case last will show
only the entries matching those arguments. (Names of ttys can be
abbreviated, thus last 0 is the same as last tty0.)
When catching a SIGINT or SIGQUIT signal, last will show how far
it has searched through the file, and in case of the SIGINT signal
(generated by the interrupt key, usually control-C) last will then
terminate.
The pseudo user reboot logs in each time the system is rebooted.
Thus last reboot will show a log of all the reboots since the log
file was created.
lastb is the same as last, except that by default it shows a log
of the /var/log/btmp file, which contains all the bad login
attempts.
-a, --hostlast
Display the hostname in the last column. Useful in combination
with the -d option.
-d, --dns
For non-local logins, Linux stores not only the hostname of
the remote host, but its IP number as well. This option
translates the IP number back into a hostname.
-f, --file file
Tell last to use a specific file instead of /var/log/wtmp. The
-f option can be given multiple times, and all of the
specified files will be processed.
-F, --fulltimes
Print full login and logout times and dates.
-i, --ip
Like -d, but displays the host’s IP number instead of the
name.
-n, --limit number
The maximum amount of logins to show.
-number
The same as -n number.
-p, --present time
Display the users who were present at the specified time. For
ways to specify time, see the section TIME FORMATS below.
-R, --nohostname
Suppresses the display of the hostname field.
-s, --since time
Display the state of logins since the specified time. The
option can be combined with -t to cover a period.
-t, --until time
Display the state of logins until the specified time.
-T, --tab-separated
Use ASCII tab characters to separate the columns in the output
instead of spaces.
--time-format format
Define the appearance of the timestamp to be one of: notime,
short, full, or iso. The notime variant will not print any
timestamps at all, short is the default, and full is the same
as the --fulltimes option. The iso variant will display the
timestamp in ISO-8601 format. The ISO format contains timezone
information, making it preferable when printouts are
investigated outside of the system.
-w, --fullnames
Display full user names and domain names / IP addresses. When
this option is not specified, user names are truncated to 8
characters, and domain names and IP addresses to 16
characters. An asterisk is shown as the last character of
truncated fields.
-x, --system
Display the system shutdown entries and run level changes.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Display version and exit.
The argument time allows the following forms:
YYYYMMDDhhmmss
"YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"
"YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm" (seconds is 00)
YYYY-MM-DD (time is 00:00:00)
hh:mm:ss (date is today)
hh:mm (date is today, seconds is 00)
now
today (time is 00:00:00)
yesterday (time is 00:00:00)
-number[smhd] (seconds/minutes/hours/days before now)
Examples of the -number[smhd] format are: -5m, -6h, -2d. The unit
specifier may be longer: -5min, -6hours, -2days.
/var/log/wtmp, /var/log/btmp
The files wtmp and btmp might not be found. The system only logs
information in these files if they are present. This is a local
configuration issue. If you want the files to be used, they can be
created with a simple touch(1) command (for example, touch
/var/log/wtmp).
An empty entry is a valid type of wtmp entry. It means that an
empty file or file with zeros is not interpreted as an error.
The utmp file format uses fixed sizes of strings, which means that
very long strings are impossible to store in the file and
impossible to display by last. The usual limits are 32 bytes for a
user and line name and 256 bytes for a hostname.
Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>
login(1), wtmp(5), init(8), shutdown(8)
For bug reports, use the issue tracker
<https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.
The last command is part of the util-linux package which can be
downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2026-05-24. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2026-05-20.) 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
util-linux 2.43.devel-739-eee2e 2026-05-24 LAST(1)
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HTML rendering created 2026-05-30 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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