Linux list all users account using the /etc/passwd file
In order to list all users on Linux, use the cat command as follows: $ cat /etc/passwd Here is what I see:
Each line in the file has seven fields as follows. For example, consider the following line: vnstat:x:131:137:vnstat daemon. /var/lib/vnstat:/usr/sbin/nologin Where,
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vnstat – The user name or login name.
x – Encrypted password is stored in the /etc/shadow file.
131 – UID (user ID number)
137 – Primary GID (group ID number)
vnstat daemon – GECOS. It may includes user’s full name (or application name, if the account is for a program), building and room number or contact person, office telephone number, home telephone number and any other contact information.
/var/lib/vnstat – Home directory for the user.
/usr/sbin/nologin – Login shell for the user. Pathnames of valid login shells comes from the /etc/shells file.
How to list users in Linux using pagers
Of course we can use pagers such as more/less commands as follows to view the /etc/passwd file: $ more /etc/passwd $ less /etc/passwd Sample outputs:
Fig.01: List users using /etc/passwd
Linux list user names only
To list only usernames type the following awk command: $ awk -F’:’ ‘< print $1>‘ /etc/passwd Sample outputs:
Another option is to use the cut command: $ cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd
Get a list of all users using the getent command
To get a list of all Linux users you can type the following getent command: $ getent passwd $ getent passwd | grep tom ## get a list all users ## $ getent passwd | cut -d: -f1 ## count all user accounts using the wc ## $ getent passwd | wc -l One can use the compgen command on Linux to list users and other resources too: $ compgen -u
Find out whether a user account exists in the Linux server
We can use above commands to see whether a user exists in the Linux machine as follows using the grep command:
A simplified command would be:
How to count user accounts in the Linux server
Want to get user accounts count on your system? Try the wc command as follows: $ compgen -u | wc -l $ getent passwd | wc -l
A Note About System and General Users
Each user has numerical user ID called UID. It is defined in /etc/passwd file. The UID for each user is automatically selected using /etc/login.defs file when you use useradd command. To see current value, enter: $ grep «^UID_MIN» /etc/login.defs $ grep UID_MIN /etc/login.defs Sample outputs:
1000 is minimum values for automatic uid selection in useradd command. In other words all normal system users must have UID >= 1000 and only those users are allowed to login into system if shell is bash/csh/tcsh/ksh etc as defined /etc/shells file. Type the following command to list all login users:
To see maximum values for automatic uid selection in the useradd command, enter: $ grep «^UID_MAX» /etc/login.defs Sample outputs:
In other words, all normal system users must have UID >= 1000 (MIN) and UID /etc/shells file. Here is an updated code to get details:
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3 Ways to List Users in Linux
Today different Operating Systems have the capability to use multiple users, each one with their settings and custom configurations to make things easier for administrators and operators to work in together on the same system.
Linux on the other hand is very strong on this matter as it allows multiple users to work at the same time on the system in an independent way. It can even allow a single user to open several sessions even from different locations in order to work on the system.
Here are some hints & tricks to handle users in Linux.
List all the users on Linux
Let’s say you want to create a sudo user in Linux. Probably, the very first thing to know is how to know what users are in my system. There are several ways you can obtain the list of users in Linux.
1. Show users in Linux using less /etc/passwd
This command allows sysops to list the the users that are locally stored in the system. It will give the listing in structured way as:
The structure in the above output goes as:
User name
Encrypted password ( x represents password is stored)
User ID number (UID)
User’s group ID number (GID)
Full name
User’s home directory
User’s Login shell (default is bash shell)
Why so many users? Which ones are ‘real’?
The list shows a lot more users than you expected because it lists all the system users too.
Now if you want to distinguish the normal users from the system users, you can refer to the User identifier (UID) number.
Generally, a normal user has UID greater or equal to 1000. This gives you a hint that the user with UID >=1000 is a normal user and users with UID
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How to List Users in Linux, List all Users Command
Home » SysAdmin » How to List Users in Linux, List all Users Command
Linux OS is unique because of its multi-user characteristic allowing multiple users on one system, at the same time. However, tracking all users is essential.
In this article, earn multiple commands to list all Linux users along with their login information. These commands work on CentOS, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, and other Linux distributions as well.
A Linux distribution installed and running
A user with sudo privileges
Access to a terminal/command line
List All Linux Users, 2 Options
List All Users in Linux with the /etc/passwd File
Details of local users can be found in the /etc/passwd file. Every line contained in the file contains the information of one user.
There are two options.
Open the etc/passwd file by typing the command:
Alternatively, you can use the less command:
Note: To display a list of the logged-on users and the information such as boot time, processes, hostnames, and more, use the who command.
List All Linux Users with the getent Command
Database entries configured in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file include the passwd database with all the usernames and login information.
To extract this data, use the command:
Both Option 1 and Option 2 will display all the users and their login information.
Each line represents one user and has seven (7) fields.
The fields are separated by : (colons) and each line includes the following information:
1. Username 2. The encrypted password (represented by x, located in the /etc/shadow file) 3. User ID number (known as UID) 4. User group ID (known as GID) 5. User full name 6. User home directory 7. The login shell (by default set to bin/bash)
How to Only List Linux Usernames
In case you don’t need all the information related to each user, you can list only the usernames on the system. There are two ways to see just the first field (the username) of each user.
Option 1: Using the awk or cut command.
To list usernames only, you can use either of the following two (2) commands:
Option 2: Using the getent command with awk and cut .
To read and display the username without any additional information using the getent command, run the following command:
Alternatively, use the command:
How to Search for Existing Linux Users
The getent command also allows you to check whether a user is present on the system.
Any of the following two commands will provide you with that information:
If the user exists, it will display login information. On the other hand, if there is no such user, there will be no output.
For example, in the image below, the query displays whether a user named example exists. The output proves that such a user exists.
System User vs Normal User
A system user is the one that creates normal users. Therefore, in this instance, the system user is the root. This user is created when you first install the Linux operating system. Additionally, you can create system users for particular applications.
On the other hand, normal users are all users that the root (or a user with sudo privileges) creates. Each normal and system user has a real login shell, home directory, as well as a user ID (UID) number. The user ID number is given automatically in the range between the minimum and maximum values.
How to Check UID_MIN and UID_MAX
If you want to check what the UID range for normal users is, use grep with the following command:
The output shows that all normal users have a UID anywhere from 1000 (UID_MIN) to 6000 (UID_MAX).
Note: Change the values in the command according to the minimum and maximum UID values for your system.
How to List Normal Users
With these numbers in mind, you ask for a list of all the users in that range with the command:
The query lists all the normal users, as seen in the image below. In this example, there are two normal users in the specified range.
After reading this guide, you should know how to list all Linux users, search for users, and find the number of Linux users in any Linux distribution ( Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Debian, and Mint).
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How to see all computers connected to a network
I am in a LAN and there are 3 Ubuntu, 2 Kubuntu, 2 Windows XP and 2 Windows 7. What commands or tools are available to see what PCs are connected to the LAN that it shows the name of the PC and the IP. Similar to tools like Angry IP that show all PCs in a LAN.
Note that I do not know the IPs or names of the computers connected to the LAN. So the tool or command should look for them to.
9 Answers 9
Arp-scan works great for me too.
-or if using ethernet:
(this last is practically identical to what Rajesh Rajendran posted; the -l standing for —localnet)
If you don’t have arp-scan (it doesn’t come with Ubuntu by default), just pull up a terminal and type:
But for a great tool, Nmap. Great for mapping networks.
The simplest thing is
I always use nmap. To scan for all devices in your network, use:
nmap -sP 192.168.0.1/24
It is a great tool to know about. You may want to install nmap using:
sudo apt-get install nmap if you are using Debian or
sudo pacman -S nmap if you are using Arch.
As a possible GUI option, the best one I have seen is Angry IP as found in http://angryip.org/download/#linux
Simply download the latest DEB package and install. Then run ipscan from Dash. Here is a screenshot:
ip neigh
ip neigh and hosts . NO nmap / sudo required.
Building on this, you can build a Python script:
If broadcast isn’t disabled on your router.
You can ping the broadcast address.
Will broadcast the ping command to every host within the 192.168.0/24 subnet.
Note: It’s probably a good idea to keep broadcasting turned off though as that’s how hackers can exploit a network using a DDOS Smurf attack. Basically, ping the broadcast address with a packet that has a spoofed destination address (ie the ip address of the victim). There’s a little more to it than that but that’s what Google is for.
Note: The same also works on Windows but you ping the actual broadcast address (not the subnet).
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Is there a command to list all users? Also to add, delete, modify users, in the terminal?
I need a command to list all users as well as commands to add, delete and modify users from terminal — any commands that could help in administrating user accounts easily by terminal.
9 Answers 9
To list
To list all local users you can use:
To list all users capable of authenticating (in some way), including non-local, see this reply.
Some more useful user-management commands (also limited to local users):
To add
To add a new user you can use:
To remove/delete
To remove/delete a user, first you can use:
Then you may want to delete the home directory for the deleted user account :
Please use with caution the above command!
To modify
To modify the username of a user:
To change the password for a user:
To change the shell for a user:
To change the details for a user (for example real name):
To add a user to the sudo group:
And, of course, see also: man adduser , man useradd , man userdel . and so on.
Just press Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:
You can also use awk: awk
The easiest way to get this kind of information is getent — see manpage for the getent command . While that command gives the same output as cat /etc/passwd it is useful to remember because it will give you lists of several elements in the OS.
To get a list of all users you type (as users are listed in /etc/passwd )
To add a user newuser to the system you would type
to create a user that has all default settings applied.
Bonus: To add any user (for instance anyuser) to a group (for instance cdrom) type
You delete a user (for instance obsolete) with
If you want to delete his home directory/mails as well you type
will remove the user and all files owned by this user on the whole system.
You can use compgen GNU bash built-in too:
Will lists all users.
This should get, under most normal situations, all normal (non-system, not weird, etc) users:
reading in from /etc/passwd
using : as a delimiter
if the third field (the User ID number) is larger than 1000 and not 65534, the first field (the username of the user) is printed.
This is because on many linux systems, usernames above 1000 are reserved for unprivileged (you could say normal) users. Some info on this here:
A user ID (UID) is a unique positive integer assigned by a Unix-like operating system to each user. Each user is identified to the system by its UID, and user names are generally used only as an interface for humans.
UIDs are stored, along with their corresponding user names and other user-specific information, in the /etc/passwd file.
The third field contains the UID, and the fourth field contains the group ID (GID), which by default is equal to the UID for all ordinary users.
In the Linux kernels 2.4 and above, UIDs are unsigned 32-bit integers that can represent values from zero to 4,294,967,296. However, it is advisable to use values only up to 65,534 in order to maintain compatibility with systems using older kernels or filesystems that can only accommodate 16-bit UIDs.
The UID of 0 has a special role: it is always the root account (i.e., the omnipotent administrative user). Although the user name can be changed on this account and additional accounts can be created with the same UID, neither action is wise from a security point of view.
The UID 65534 is commonly reserved for nobody, a user with no system privileges, as opposed to an ordinary (i.e., non-privileged) user. This UID is often used for individuals accessing the system remotely via FTP (file transfer protocol) or HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
UIDs 1 through 99 are traditionally reserved for special system users (sometimes called pseudo-users), such as wheel, daemon, lp, operator, news, mail, etc. These users are administrators who do not need total root powers, but who perform some administrative tasks and thus need more privileges than those given to ordinary users.
Some Linux distributions (i.e., versions) begin UIDs for non-privileged users at 100. Others, such as Red Hat, begin them at 500, and still others, such Debian, start them at 1000. Because of the differences among distributions, manual intervention can be necessary if multiple distributions are used in a network in an organization.
Also, it can be convenient to reserve a block of UIDs for local users, such as 1000 through 9999, and another block for remote users (i.e., users elsewhere on the network), such as 10000 to 65534. The important thing is to decide on a scheme and adhere to it.
Among the advantages of this practice of reserving blocks of numbers for particular types of users is that it makes it more convenient to search through system logs for suspicious user activity.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary that each entry in the UID field be unique. However, non-unique UIDs can cause security problems, and thus UIDs should be kept unique across the entire organization. Likewise, recycling of UIDs from former users should be avoided for as long as possible.
. While that command gives the same output as cat /etc/passwd it is useful to remember because it will give you lists of several elements in the OS.
