Example 8.7: tailwtmp

#!/usr/bin/perl
# tailwtmp - watch for logins and logouts; 
# uses linux utmp structure, from utmp(5)
$typedef = 's x2 i A12 A4 l A8 A16 l';
$sizeof = length pack($typedef, () );
use IO::File;
open(WTMP, '/var/log/wtmp') or die "can't open /var/log/wtmp: $!";
seek(WTMP, 0, SEEK_END);
for (;;) { 
        while (read(WTMP, $buffer, $sizeof) == $sizeof) {
        ($type, $pid,  $line, $id, $time, $user, $host, $addr) 
            = unpack($typedef, $buffer);
        next unless $user && ord($user) && $time;
        printf "%1d %-8s %-12s %2s %-24s %-16s %5d %08x\n", 
            $type,$user,$line,$id,scalar(localtime($time)), 
            $host,$pid,$addr;
    } 
    for ($size = -s WTMP; $size == -s WTMP; sleep 1) {}
    WTMP->clearerr();
}