How to Get Root User Login Emails (NixCraft)
- 06/06/2020 8:01 PM
from NixCraft
How to Set SSH Login Email Alerts in Linux Server
To carry out this tutorial, you must have root level access on the server and a little knowledge of nano or vi editor and also mailx (Mail Client) installed on the server to send the emails. depending upon your distribution you can install mailx client using one of the following commands.
On Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint
# apt-get install mailx
On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
# yum install mailx
Set SSH Root Login Email Alerts
Now login as root user and go to root’s home directory by typing cd /root command.
# cd /root
Next, add an entry to the .bashrc file. This file sets local environment variables to the users and does some login tasks. For example, here we setting a an email login alert.
Open .bashrc file with vi or nano editor. Please remember .bashrc is a hidden file, you won’t see it by doing ls -l command. You’ve to use -a flag to see hidden files in Linux.
# vi .bashrc
Add the following whole line at the bottom of the file. Make sure to replace “ServerName” with a hostname of your Server and change “your@yourdomain.com” with a your email address.
echo 'ALERT - Root Shell Access (ServerName) on:' `date` `who` | mail -s "Alert: Root Access from `who | cut -d'(' -f2 | cut -d')' -f1`" your@yourdomain.com
Save and close the file and logout and log back in. Once you login via SSH, a .bashrc file by default executed and sends you an email address of the root login alert.
Sample Email Alert
ALERT - Root Shell Access (Database Replica) on: Thu Nov 28 16:59:40 IST 2013 tecmint pts/0 2013-11-28 16:59 (172.16.25.125)
Set SSH Normal User Login Email Alerts
Login as normal user (tecmint) and go to user’s home directory by typing cd /home/tecmint/ command.
# cd /home/tecmint
Next, open .bashrc file and add the following line at end of the file. Make sure to replace values as shown above.
echo 'ALERT - Root Shell Access (ServerName) on:' `date` `who` | mail -s "Alert: Root Access from `who | cut -d'(' -f2 | cut -d')' -f1`" your@yourdomain.com
Save and close the file and logout and login again. Once you login back again, a .bashrc file executed and sends you an email address of the user login alert.
This way you can set an email alert on any user to receive login alerts. Just open the user’s .bashrc file which should located under the user’s home directory (i.e. /home/username/.bashrc) and set the login alerts as described above.
