A bit complex doubt.....

[veda87]

i found that the last login details are been kept at/var/log/lastlogin.... when I opened it using vi editor... i found something like this
¸<92>hJtty1^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@ ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@ ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@× p¡ö·PÞ× ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^Tûç·^E^@^@^@^A^@^@^@^@^@^@ p¡ö·p¡ö·8Þ× ^@^@^@^@xØ× @¡ö·^D^@^@^@ø\Ú¿e(è·@¡ö·^]^@^@^@@¡ö·ô<8f>ö·ôÏ÷·XÞ× xØ× ^X]Ú¿Ø}÷·XÞ× xØ× ^@^@^@^@ô<8f>ö·@¡ö·xØ× 8]Ú¿V^Dè·@¡ö·xØ× pØ×

and when I login into my virutal console using root... it gives me my last login detail as
Last login: thu Jul 23 18:00:32 IST 2009 on tty1 I could figure out the console tty1 but not the date and time...I knew the /var/log/lastlogin is hard coded...

Can anyone help to know how the system interprets it.. How can I see this hard coded file in an user understandable format..

[Martin Witte]

When I run lastlog, the program designed to read file /var/log/lastlog, see man lastlog for more information, it seems to be not working:

martin@sony:~$ lastlog -u martin
Username Port From Latest
martin **Never logged in**
martin@sony:~$


I can find this information with

martin@sony:~$ last martin|head
martin pts/0 :0.0 Thu Jul 23 20:23 still logged in
martin pts/0 :0.0 Thu Jul 23 19:55 - 19:55 (00:00)
martin tty7 :0 Thu Jul 23 19:30 still logged in
martin pts/0 :0.0 Tue Jul 21 21:19 - 21:20 (00:00)
martin tty7 :0 Tue Jul 21 21:19 - down (00:59)
martin tty7 :0 Mon Jul 20 21:52 - down (00:07)
martin tty7 :0 Mon Jul 20 19:35 - down (02:07)
martin tty7 :0 Sat Jul 18 23:38 - down (01:37)
martin pts/0 :0.0 Thu Jul 16 21:08 - 21:26 (00:18)
martin pts/0 :0.0 Thu Jul 16 20:22 - 20:28 (00:06)
martin@sony:~$