How can I see the last time a program was run?

Question

Is there any way I can see what programs were running at a specific time? Is there a way to see the last time a program was run? I'm trying to see if a certain program was running yesterday because I suspect it may have been affecting the program I was using. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

• Look at the access time on the program binary (but Ubuntu by default mounts with relatime, so this won't be accurate unless you've previously enabled it)
• Look for mentions of the program in ~/.xsession or /var/log/kern.log around that time

Otherwise no.