List Users on Linux#

If you need to list all the users on your Linux system, you can use a few different methods to retrieve this information. Here are the most common approaches:

Method 1: Using /etc/passwd#

The /etc/passwd file contains information about the system's users. You can view it to find all usernames:

cat /etc/passwd

Each line in the file represents a user, for example:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
user1:x:1000:1000::/home/user1:/bin/bash
user2:x:1001:1001::/home/user2:/bin/bash

In this example, the usernames are root, user1, and user2.

Using awk to Extract Usernames#

awk extract just the usernames from the /etc/passwd file, you can use awk to print the first field (the username) from each line:

awk -F: '{print $1}' /etc/passwd

Method 2: Using getent passwd#

The getent command can retrieve the list of users from various sources, such as local files or network services like LDAP. To list all users, run:

getent passwd

This will provide similar output to the cat /etc/passwd command.

Method 3: Using ls /home#

If your system uses the /home directory to store user files, you can list the user directories, which correspond to user accounts:

ls /home

This will show the directories in /home, each of which corresponds to a user account on the system.