Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Monitoring User Activity on the System

Monitoring user activity is part of the system administrator’s duties and an essential task in tracking how system resources are being used. The w command tells the system administrator who is logged in, where he is logged in, and what he is doing. No one can hide from the super user. The w command can be followed by a specific user’s name to show only that user.

The ac command provides information about the total connect time of a user measured in hours. It accesses the /var/log/wtmp file for the source of its information. The ac command proves most useful in shell scripts to generate reports on operating system usage for management review. Note that to use the ac command you must install the acct package ...