Find Out Which Student was Using a Workstation at a Specific Time

Novell Cool Solutions: Trench
By James Davey

Digg This - Slashdot This Updated: 1 Jan 2005

As high school administrators, we needed an easy way to know what student was logged into a particular workstation at a particular time. This was important for security reasons when we knew that, for example, an inappropriate message was sent from a specific workstation but the student who sent it is long gone and others may have logged in after them. Or students may hack into the computer and make configuration changes and we know when it happened but not by whom.

SOLUTION: By using a batch file that force runs on login in a NAL app, policy package or login script, we created a text file with the workstation's name that lists the time and date the user logged in. Each new user appends to the file. It has caught us more than a few troublesome users.

A second one can be set in a policy package to record logoff time as well by setting the policy to run on event user logoff.

LOGUSER.BAT
@echo off
echo %nwusername%,%date%,%time% >>\\server\vol\logs\%computername%.rpt

If you have any questions you may contact James at jdavey@glenbrook.k12.il.us

See Also

Another Way to Find out Which Student was Using Which Workstation, When

Reader Comments

• We've used a system like this for quite some time, and lately it has caused us all sorts of grief. The main reason seems to be that Win98 handles appending to text files differently to Win2000/XP. We had a few problems with important applications that required us turning off oplocks, and this seems to cause Win98 to *lock* the text file when it appends. Thus the first person who opens the file on Win98 locks it, and it seems to stay locked even after that person has logged out. We are developing a Java/PostgreSQL database solution to get around this.
• Well it does not exactly show what time a student was using a workstation - it only shows what time he logged in ( which is still helpful ). What rights do you give them to that file though ?
• THis is fine if you have every machine with it's own name. if you dont have to access a Microsoft server you dont need the microsoft client and as a result dont have to name all of your machines. Makes image deplyment just that little bit easier The ability to get as a login script variable a client machine's ip would be realy nice and would solve this problem
• I'm playing with doing via a website. NAL app calls IE, and passes variables via the url, these include Computername, and the NW Username. You could easily track the IP with a server variable. This is all stored in a central Access Database, (May have to move it to SQL)... and is accessible via our intranet webpage. If anyone is interested... email me. areno@cityofboise.org :)
• We use a similar system, but pass the variables from the Login script to a batch file which appends it. The log file is rolled over weekly by a scheduled task on an XP box. This has the same Windows 98 appending problem though. The folder where logs are stored has RW but no F rights, this means that the script can append entries, but students can't view them easily.
• A couple response to comments. RE: Rights - Grant the Rights to the WSObject and not users. This prevents students from touching the file. ( NT/2K/XP sites) No PC Name? Get creative - Use MAC address or some other unique identifier.
• Check out the free utility from the sysinternals.com website called BGInfo. In addition to customizing a user's background, it can send login event information to SQL datasources.

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