Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Gina — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:44:31 GMT

Is there a way to track 'old' logons/offs? if someone no longer is using the computer, but want to see a history? is this possible?

Thanks!!

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

baffi888 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:15:05 GMT

Hi,

Is there a way to track further based on user's idle time. The problem is that the scrips will only track when users log-off or log-on. Most users have their own computers, and they never log off..simply just locked the computer when they go home.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

tosu — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:17:00 GMT

Is there a way to add this script without using group policy??? We have a bunch of lab computers that we want to add this too by deploying it via ghost console. going to each computer and adding it manually will be a long, time consuming task. Perhaps there's a way through a registry change?

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Kkangtong — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:22:14 GMT

This works great! But the output file, logs.log, gets overwritten time to time. Does anyone know why and how to prevent?

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

guaro — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:36:04 GMT

Hitendra

Did you find a way to do this track lock and unlock computer user also as well.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

dcdcdc — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:41:10 GMT

Thank you! Works great!

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Bhaskar — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:08:54 GMT

Hi All,

Is there any way to import all the data to SQL server as soon as there is any update in output file.

regards

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Hitendra — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:53:43 GMT

Hi,

We are already doing this, but have a problem on XP, when a user locks his PC at the end of the day and next day comes in and simply unlocks it, the cached login on XP lets him in (though his session with the server is disconnected), and tries in the background to do a authenticate the user on the server.

The handshake/authentication does happen but in this case the login script set through the Group policies does not run.

Does anyone has a solution for this problem. Will help immensely to track such users login time who do not restart or log off their PCs.

Hitendra

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Ashwani — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:04:14 GMT

Hello Team,

Thanks for the information. Login batch file works fine, but logoff file works after 20 min of login into system.

If you logon and after 5 minutes you logoff the system Logoff batch dosent works. Result:--. you will get teh login information but not teh logoff information.

Somebody please help to resolve teh issue.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Patrick — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:12:03 GMT

Hi,

I need to do a script that track the user usage on the computer. Let say if the user uses the computer for 24hr, it will send an email to me. It have the check the logon time and the logoff time. Anyone know how to do this?

Thanks

Patrick

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Techie — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:47:34 GMT

Hi,

I am on Win 2003 standard ed server and i am not the I.T admin and I don't have access to the active directory. So, how can i track the local logon/logff on my server???

I did not find any "group policy" option but I can see there's a "local security policy" thing but I do not see any option there to call these scripts.

Any pointers will be appreciated

Thanks

Techie

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Robert Waite — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:03:29 GMT

Munawar; check the permissions of your shared folder not just the security level.

this will catch you everytime.

Bob

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Robert Waite — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:42:47 GMT

I ran this and get the network path not found, did anyone figure this out?

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Munawar — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:56:16 GMT

I did all as told above, But unable to get the output.

I shared the folder with everyone full access and at NTFS even i granted users the full access but i am unable to get the login/logoff log.

If i run the command on a local client's command prompt with the output address of local computer i get the output on local computer, but if i give the output network path as \\server1\new folder\%username%.csv and then echo the comand in the comand prompt i get the error as Network path not found. Even if i run ths command as admin i get the same error. The network share are reachable and also fullly accessible. Any help plz

I m using win2k3 as DC and win XP clients.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Paul — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:00:58 GMT

Or bj, to add the logon / off details to a file that is named after the date just do the following.

Create the 2 batchfiles below (Logon.bat and Logoff.bat)

Add them to the GP as described above.

Username, action, computername, time, date will be saved to a single txt file that has the current date.

The next day all the details are saved to a new txt file with that date and so on.

Then create an xls template to read the data from the txt file so that it sorts it in time and username order.

Note: you will have to mess about with the date variables in order to get the file name in the correct date format that you require.

Logon.bat

---------

echo %username% Logged on %computername% %time% %date% >> \\server\share$\%date:~-7,2%-%date:~0,2%-%date:~-4,4%.txt

---------

Logoff.bat

----------

echo %username% Logged on %computername% %time% %date% >> \\server\share$\%date:~-7,2%-%date:~0,2%-%date:~-4,4%.txt

----------

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

bj — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:42:37 GMT

figured I'd post this.

I have it both logging in and out going into one csv file, administered via group policies. (work great)

I took it one step further, and created a batch file that at the end of the day will rename the file to the current date. Doing this allows me to keep the log file small, yet still organized via date.

how to:

1. Create a bat file in the same folder as your log share.

2. Note: run the bat file from the same server that the log share is located. (running the bat file from a different computer changed the directory it was being run from, therefor it couldn't find the csv file, easy fix if someone else wants to look up the solution).

2a. On the computer hosting the share create an "archive.bat" file and use task scheduler to make it run every day.

3. archive.bat should read:

'------Start Copy -----------

' this runs daily using the task scheduler on server: Apple.

' Set the Date Format

' gotten from www.tech-recipes.com/computer_programming_tips956.html

echo on

@REM Seamonkey's quick date batch (MMDDYYYY format)

@REM Setups %date variable

@REM First parses month, day, and year into mm , dd, yyyy formats and then combines to be MMDDYYYY

FOR /F "TOKENS=1* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET CDATE=%%B

FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 eol=/ DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET mm=%%B

FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ eol=/" %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET dd=%%B

FOR /F "TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET yyyy=%%B

'SET date=%mm%%dd%%yyyy%

SET date=%yyyy%-%mm%-%dd%

' Copy and delete the UserLogon.csv. the UserLogon.csv file will be recreated next time someone logs in.

copy UserLogon.csv %date%.csv

del Userlogon.csv

'-------------End copy-------------

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Manish — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:52:23 GMT

A very good discussion, and easy robust and fast solution.

thank u all.

we need few more lazy people's guide to get a revolution in sys. administration.

keep it up .

* one more lazy admin.

Manish

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

C. Comito — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:19:38 GMT

Hey guys/gals, seems to be a lot of people wanting to do this. I'm attempting but am having troubles applying these methods to Win2K Server... Anyone have a "how to" that pertains to what L Bueno wrote for Win2k Server?

1) Create a folder (c:\monitoring) and shared it as Monitoring$ (the $ will make it a hidden share on the network).

2) give everyone Write permission on the share.

3) Save the scripts here for now. Right click on both files and select Copy (we will use this later)

???4) Launched Server Manager and expand Group Policy->Forest->Domains->MyBusiness->Users->SBSUsers

5)Create a policy here (MonitoringPolicy)

6) Edit this policy (right-click Edit)

???7) Navigate to User Configuration-> Windows Settings-> Scripts (Logon/Logoff)-> Logon

8) Right-click on Logon and choose Properties...

9) Click Show files button, click Paste and delete logoff.cmd close this window.

10) Click the Add button on the logon properties window. and click Browse (this will open the logon folder)

11) Select the logon.cmd file click open, then OK

12) Click Ok..

13) repete the steps 8 thru 12 (when you paste the files delete the logon.cmd and leave the logoff.cmd)

14) close the GP

15) click Start-> Run and type gpupdate /force

16) Login from a workstation to your network

17) On your server locate the monitoring folder and there you will see the log files created based on the user name....

Thank you all.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Arvind — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:09:22 GMT

Logon scripts are only executing when loging locally. When loging from a workstation the logon scripts are not executing. Write permission have been granted to the log files.

From remote machine when running the script manually i.e

\\server1\shared\logon.cmd then the entry is logged in log file.

Any help will be highly useful.

re: Lazy man's way to track user logon/logoff

Richard — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:49:14 GMT

@J. Sheridan:

Use the %clientname% variable to log the computername of the users pc/laptop.

Not sure how to log the client IP address.

Richard