[RELEASE] lastdown(8) -- A utility to show you whom was logged on when a system went down

[Devin Teske]

I've written a new script. It's called "lastdown".

What it does is pretty simple, but yet oh-so valuable to us for administering large clusters.

1. Use sysctl(8) to get the ``kern.boottime'' MIB
2. Parse the `sec' value from the above
3. Make optional adjustments
4. Pass value to date(1) to format it in CCYYddmmHHMM.SS format
5. Pass formatted date string to last(8)'s `-d' argument to... wait for it...

List the users that were on that system during that time.

At first, I just wrote this to see if last(8)'s manual was accurate. That is, I wanted to see what exactly it would have to say if I gave it a value. Well, after playing with it -- and then not -- I realized one of the more practical applications of it might be to list the state of the UTMP(5) log from just-before the system booted.

Running this on a cluster is fun. You get to see all the people that (pardon my [non-]French, but) got screwed when last the system took a long walk in the desert (looking for it's horse no doubt *chuckles*).

I just wanted to clean this up, release it under the BSD License for all, and then sleep on how to implement the next iteration (you'll notice it's internal version in the header states it's at 2.0 -- there was an uglier predecessor).

If you head on over to http://druidbsd.sourceforge.net/ you'll see examples where the UTMP(5) log (that's the wtmp file) begins on a date that is after the boottime and you'll have to specific "-f /var/log/wtmp.1" for example to query a log that knows about the state of the machine at boot time. I'm going to dream up ways to automatically when I should go back.

The code can be had at:

	http://druidbsd.sourceforge.net/download/lastdown.txt

or

	http://druidbsd.sourceforge.net/
-- 
Cheers,
Devin Teske


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