How to figure out the login activity on my imac

[renzocataldo]

Hi everybody,
I would like to know the details of the login activity of my imac. I tried going into Applications/Utilities/Console. I looked at system.log but it only gave me info for today. Possibly very naiive question. If I run a disk utility/first aid, will the system.log be erased? If so, retrievable?
thanks
Renzo

 

[762999]

Hi everybody,
I would like to know the details of the login activity of my imac. I tried going into Applications/Utilities/Console. I looked at system.log but it only gave me info for today. Possibly very naiive question. If I run a disk utility/first aid, will the system.log be erased? If so, retrievable?
thanks
Renzo

the logs are stored in the folder /var/log/ and there is a logrotate process that compress the current log and rename it, this also create a new log file. My system.log get rotated every 2 days on my macbook.

You should see :

system.log
system.log.0.gz   
system.log.1.gz 
system.log.2.gz 
system.log.3.gz

system.log is the current one, then .0.gz and the oldest one is your biggest number. Your system will keep X amount of each log but there will be a rotation, so you may have up to a week or more of data.

if you grab a copy of your logs files, you could uncompress them in another folder and inspect the log

 

[kryten2]

You can also use the last command in Terminal.

last -50

Info : https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/last.1.html

 

[762999]

You can also use the last command in Terminal.

last -50

Info : https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/last.1.html

I think you forgot 'n'

last -n 50

 

[kryten2]

I think you forgot 'n'

last -n 50

No, I didn't. I made the same mistake. I admit the man page for OS X version 10.9 might seem confusing but it clearly states -n Limits the report to n lines. Notice that the -n isn't bold.

Billys-Mac-Pro:~ kryten$ last -n20
last: illegal option -- n
usage: last [-#] [-t tty] [-h hostname] [user ...]

Note : I'm using Mavericks.

 

[762999]

No, I didn't. I made the same mistake. I admit the man page for OS X version 10.9 might seem confusing but it clearly states -n Limits the report to n lines. Notice that the -n isn't bold.

Billys-Mac-Pro:~ kryten$ last -n20
last: illegal option -- n
usage: last [-#] [-t tty] [-h hostname] [user ...]

Note : I'm using Mavericks.

ok.. I checked the linux version and the -n was required. There also a ton of other arguments for
linux. Well the -n limit the lines like OSX but you can specify a date with:

-s, --since time



again, this is linux, do not attempt on OSX!

 

[renzocataldo]

You can also use the last command in Terminal.

last -50

Info : https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/last.1.html

Thanks to both you guys. I'll try them out.