Log user activity for the last 24 hours by terminal

Solution 1:

• ~/.bash_history will show the commands that was used by a user.
• Install acct : sudo apt-get install acct in addition to login/logout. It provides logs of every single command run by every single user. Below mentioned commands are the features of acct
  • ac print statistics about connect time
  • accton turns accounting on or off
  • last list last logins of users and terms
  • lastcomm list last commands executed
  • sa print accounting statistics
  • dump-acct print accounting file in human-readable form

Solution 2:

The "last" command is designed to give you this information.

Example:

laptop:~% last
userx pts/0        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:31   still logged in   
userx pts/0        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:30 - 11:30  (00:00)    
userx pts/0        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:30 - 11:30  (00:00)    
userx pts/4        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:25   still logged in   
userx pts/2        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:23 - 11:28  (00:05)    
userx pts/2        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:20 - 11:20  (00:00)    
root  pts/1        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:19 - 11:28  (00:09)    
root  pts/1        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:19 - 11:19  (00:00)    
userx pts/0        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:10 - 11:12  (00:01)    
root  pts/1        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 11:05 - 11:10  (00:04)    
userx pts/3        :0.0             Mon Sep  3 10:18   still logged in   

wtmp begins Mon Sep  3 10:18:35 2012

However as far as I know, there is no option to restrict the lookup to the last 24 hours.