Which users are logged in linux

UNIX / Linux List Current Logged In Users

H ow do I print the user names of users currently logged in to the current UNIX / Linux host / server from a command prompt?

You need to use any one of the following command line tools to list currently logged in users on Linux or Unix-like systems.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	w or who command on Linux and Unix
Est. reading time	5m

The following two file keep login records on Linux and Unix-like systems:

• /var/run/utmp – Keeps and allows us to discover information about who is currently using the system. Please note that there may be more L inux and Unix users currently using the system, because not all programs use utmp logging . In other words, poorly written app, hidden programs, malware, and other bad stuff will not be useful to list logged in users.
• /var/log/wtmp – Keeps records all logins and logouts.

We simply cannot read these files using cat command/grep command/egrep command as file is in binary database format. Hence, we use the following commands to find currently logged in users in Linux and Unix-like systems.

Linux Command To List Current Logged In Users

1. w command – Shows information about the users currently on the machine, and their processes.
2. who command – Display information about users who are currently logged in.
3. users command – See the login names of the users currently on the system, in sorted order, space separated, on a single line. It reads all information from /var/run/utmp file.

How to find currently logged in users in Linux

Open a terminal (or login into remote server using ssh command) and type the following commands.

Using w command to list current logged in users under Unix or Linux

Open the terminal application and then type the w command:
$ w

Fig.01: w command in action.

Understanding w command outputs

From Fig.01 we see the following for each user:

• USER – Linux or Unix login name.
• TTY – The tty name.
• FROM The remote host or IP address.
• @Login – Login time.
• IDEL – Idle time.
• JCPU – The JCPU time is the time used by all processes attached to the tty. However, it does not include past background jobs, but does include currently running background jobs.
• PCPU – The PCPU time is the time used by the current process, named in the “what” field.
• WHAT – The command line of that users current process.

To see info about a user named tom, enter:
$ w tom
Tell w command not print header:
$ w -h
$ w —no-header
We can also ignore current process username by passing the -u or —no-current to the w command:
$ w -u
$ w —no-current
Want to see remote hostname field? Try:
$ w -f
Show IP address instead of hostname for from field:
$ w -i
We can also old style output. In other words old outputs prints blank space for idle times less than one minute:
$ w -o

Display all logged in users using who command

The who command works on all Unix like operating systems such as macOS, *BSD, Linux and so on. The syntax is pretty simple:
# who
Here is what we see:

The who command displays the following information:

• root – The username
• pts/0 – Type of the terminal device. In this example, we see pseudoterminal pts/0 used by root user.
• 2013-03-12 15:10 – User login date and time stamp.
• (10.1.3.177) – The remote IP address from which the user logged into this server.

We can pass the -a option to who command as follows to see time of last system boot, display dead processes, system login processes, active processes spawned by init/systemd, print current runlevel, print last system clock change, show user’s message status, and list users logged in to Linux or Unix box:
# who -a
Here is output from older Linux system (pre Systemd):

Sample outputs from Systemd based Linux sysetem:

Getting help with the whois command

You can pass the following options to the who command (taken from the who command man page):

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users command

Open a terminal or login over the ssh session and enter the following users command:
$ users
Output who is currently logged:

Vieing logged in users with last command

Want to see a listing of last logged in users? Use the last command to lookup binary database called /var/log/wtmp and displays a list of all users logged in (and out) since that file was created. For instance see history for user named ‘vivek’:
$ last vivek

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How to show current logged in users in Linux

All user names are stored in /etc/passwd file and can be displayed with help of cat command or grep command/egrep command:
cat /etc/passwd
grep ‘^userNameHere’ /etc/passwd
grep ‘^tom’ /etc/passwd
Let us see all examples and usage in details.

How to show current logged in users in Linux

• The current time ( 22:11:17 )
• How long the Linux server has been running (18 days)
• How many users are currently logged on Linux (2 users)
• The system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes (1.01, 1.04, 1.05)

The following info displayed for each current logged in user:

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• sweta – Login name
• pts/10 – The tty name
• minitx – The remote host/desktop/laptop name
• 22:11 – Login time
• 5.00s – Idle time
• 0.04s – JCPU (it the time used by all processes attached to the tty. It does not include past background jobs, but does include currently running background jobs.)
• 0.02s – PCPU (it is the time used by the current process, named in the “what” field.)
• vim replicant.py – The command line of their current process

Find out who you are currently logged in as on Linux

Execute the following command:
whoami
Another option is to just type the following id command:
id

Use the whoami and id commands to find out who you are currently logged in as on Linux based system

Linux show who is logged on

Conclusion

This page showed how to find out current logged in users in Linux and what they are doing from the terminal. For more info see man pages using the man command:
man w
man who
man whoami

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6 commands to list the logged in users in Linux

But how will you check the complete list of logged in users either current or all those attempts which have been made to connect your machine by any user and the status of connection

Here are 6 commands which I use to view the users who have logged in recently or are currently logged in to any particular Linux machine

Method 1

Method 2

last: This command searches back through the file /var/log/wtmp (or the file designated by the -f flag) and displays a list of all users logged in (and out) since that file was created. Names of users and tty’s can be given, in which case last will show only those entries matching the arguments.

# last -a
deepak pts/3 Tue Oct 16 18:01 – 18:01 (00:00) 10.10.10.30
root pts/2 Tue Oct 16 17:51 still logged in 10.10.10.30
root pts/1 Tue Oct 16 14:29 – 18:03 (03:34) 10.10.10.30
root pts/3 Tue Oct 16 11:10 – 13:11 (02:00) 10.10.10.30
root pts/1 Mon Oct 15 20:30 – 13:21 (16:51) 10.10.10.30
root pts/3 Mon Oct 15 18:02 – 18:37 (00:34) 10.10.10.30
root pts/1 Mon Oct 15 15:23 – 18:34 (03:11) 10.10.10.30
root pts/1 Mon Oct 15 10:45 – 15:22 (04:36) 10.10.10.30
root pts/2 Fri Oct 12 18:34 – 15:53 (3+21:19) :2.0
root pts/1 Fri Oct 12 18:07 – 19:34 (01:27) 10.10.10.30
root pts/0 Fri Oct 12 17:57 still logged in :0.0
root tty1 Fri Oct 12 17:56 still logged in :0
reboot system boot Fri Oct 12 17:44 – 18:03 (4+00:19) 2.6.32-220.el6.i686

Method 3

Method 4

finger: If no arguments are specified, finger will print an entry for each user currently logged into the system.

Method 5

who: This command shows currently logged in users with time details

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How to find which users are currently logged in?

shows among others 4 users, should I be worried?

According to man uptime

uptime gives a one line display of the following information. The current time, how long the system has been running, how many users are currently logged on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

Is there a way to find which four users are «currently logged on»?

6 Answers 6

The easiest method to find who is logged on to your system is the use the who command, a part of the gnu coreutils package. It can be used as an ordinary user with no options or with my own favored option which enhances readability:

At times you may see yourself or other users apparently logged in more than once with the use of pts/0 and pts/1 in place rather than tty1 , This indicates a ‘Pseudo Terminal Slave’ (= pts) and simply shows that you or another user have opened an application such as xterm , sshd or similar process that creates a pseudoterminal master and slave pairing.

More information concerning pts in the referenced AskUbuntu thread, and the man page link from within the accepted answer:

All of these answers are excessively bloated. Three characters for a command? Please.

The fastest way to find who’s logged on and doing what is:

You can use the command users to see who is currently logged in. Take care.

It displays the username, terminal number, login date-time and IP address.

Using who will tell you who’s logged in. You can also use ps au and it will show who’s logged in and what they are running.

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4 Ways to Identify Who is Logged-In on Your Linux System

This article is written by Hari Haran.

As a system administrator, you may want to know who is on the system at any give point in time. You may also want to know what they are doing. In this article let us review 4 different methods to identify who is on your Linux system.

1. Get the running processes of logged-in user using w

w command is used to show logged-in user names and what they are doing. The information will be read from /var/run/utmp file. The output of the w command contains the following columns:

• Name of the user
• User’s machine number or tty number
• Remote machine address
• User’s Login time
• Idle time (not usable time)
• Time used by all processes attached to the tty (JCPU time)
• Time used by the current process (PCPU time)
• Command currently getting executed by the users

Following options can be used for the w command:

• -h Ignore the header information
• -u Display the load average (uptime output)
• -s Remove the JCPU, PCPU, and login time.

2. Get the user name and process of logged in user using who and users command

who command is used to get the list of the usernames who are currently logged in. Output of the who command contains the following columns: user name, tty number, date and time, machine address.

To get a list of all usernames that are currently logged in, use the following:

Users Command

users command is used to print the user name who are all currently logged in the current host. It is one of the command don’t have any option other than help and version. If the user using, ‘n’ number of terminals, the user name will shown in ‘n’ number of time in the output.

3. Get the username you are currently logged in using whoami

whoami command is used to print the loggedin user name.

whoami command gives the same output as id -un as shown below:

who am i command will display the logged-in user name and current tty details. The output of this command contains the following columns: logged-in user name, tty name, current time with date and ip-address from where this users initiated the connection.

Also, if you do su to some other user, this command will give the information about the logged in user name details.

4. Get the user login history at any time

last command will give login history for a specific username. If we don’t give any argument for this command, it will list login history for all users. By default this information will read from /var/log/wtmp file. The output of this command contains the following columns:

• User name
• Tty device number
• Login date and time
• Logout time
• Total working time

This article is written by Hari Haran. He is working in bk Systems (p) Ltd, and interested in contributing to the open source. The Geek Stuff welcomes your tips and guest articles.

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