Here we can see, “How to Determine the Current User Account in Linux”
If Linux means anything, it means choice. You’ll achieve even an easy task like identifying the present user in some ways. This tutorial will show you ways to use a number of the quickest and easiest methods.
Why would you like to seek out the identity of the present user? In many cases, the owner of the pc is that the only user and, without getting too existential, they probably know themselves. Perhaps, but it’s also common for people to make additional user accounts to permit relations to access the pc. And, if you’re connected to a foreign shell on a server somewhere, you’ll need a brief reminder of the username you’re logged in with. If you see a logged-in session with nobody attending, how does one identify the present user from the command line?
Let’s try the simplest option first. All we’d like to try to do is check out the prompt. By default, Linux distributions have the username within the prompt. Simple, and we didn’t even need to A thing.
Use whoami to Display Your Username
To use the terminal window to display the user you’re actively logged in as, type the subsequent command:
whoami
The output of the above command shows the present user, like this:
jacob
To quickly see how this works with another user account (if you haven’t made the other users in Linux), use the sudo command to log in as root:
sudo su
Then, if you rerun the whoami command, you will be told that you’re root.
How to Do It With id -un
In a strange circumstance where whoami isn’t installed, there’s another command you’ll use to display your current username.
id -un
The result’s precisely the same because of the whoami command to display Jacob during this example.
The id command can show quite the present user. It also can show the user id, group id, and groups to which the user belongs. for instance, to point out only the influential group the user belongs to, type the following:
id -g
The above command only shows the group id. It doesn’t show the group name. to point out the effective group name, execute this command:
id -gn
You can display every group id that a user belongs to by entering this:
id -G
The above command only shows the group ids. you’ll also use the Linux id command to display the group names:
id -Gn
If you would like to display your user id without the username, run the subsequent command:
id -u
More Information
You can use the –help switch with either whoami or id to seek out the present man page for every program.
id --help
whoami --help
To see the present version of id or whoami, use the subsequent commands:
id --version
whoami --version
11 Ways to Find User Account Info and Login Details in Linux
We’ll start by watching commands to seek out a user’s account information, then elucidate commands to look at login details.
1. id Command
id may be a simple instruction utility for displaying true and effective user and group IDs as follows.
$ id tecmint uid=1000(tecmint) gid=1000(tecmint) groups=1000(tecmint),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),113(lpadmin),130(sambashare)
2. groups Command
groups command is used to show all the groups a user belongs to like this.
$ groups tecmint tecmint : tecmint adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare
3. finger Command
finger command is employed to look at information a few users on Linux. It doesn’t come per-installed on many Linux systems.
To install it on your system, run this command on the terminal.
$ sudo apt install finger #Debian/Ubuntu $ sudo yum install finger #RHEL/CentOS $ sudo dnf install finger #Fedora 22+
It shows a user’s real name; home directory; shell; login: name, time; and so much more as below.
$ finger tecmint Login: tecmint Name: TecMint Directory: /home/tecmint Shell: /bin/bash On since Fri Sep 22 10:39 (IST) on tty8 from :0 2 hours 1 minute idle No mail. No Plan.
4. getent Command
getent maybe an instruction utility for fetching entries from Name Service Switch (NSS) libraries from a selected system database.
To get a user’s account details, use the password database and the username as follows.
$ getent passwd tecmint tecmint:x:1000:1000:TecMint,,,:/home/tecmint:/bin/bash
5. grep Command
grep command may be a powerful pattern searching tool available on most if not all Linus systems. you’ll use it to seek out information a few specific users from the system accounts file: /etc/passwd as shown below.
$ grep -i tecmint /etc/passwd tecmint:x:1000:1000:TecMint,,,:/home/tecmint:/bin/bash
6. lslogins Command
lslogins Command shows information about known users within the system; the -u flag only displays user accounts.
$ lslogins -u UID USER PROC PWD-LOCK PWD-DENY LAST-LOGIN GECOS 0 root 144 root 1000 tecmint 70 10:39:07 TecMint,,, 1001 aaronkilik 0 1002 john 0 John Doo
7. users Command
users command shows the usernames of all users currently logged on the system like so.
$ users tecmint aaron
8. who Command
who Command is employed to display users logged on the system, including the terminals they’re connecting from.
$ who -u tecmint tty8 2017-09-22 10:39 02:09 2067 (:0)
9. w Command
w command shows all users who are logged on the system and what they’re doing.
$ w 12:46:54 up 2:10, 1 user, load average: 0.34, 0.44, 0.57 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT tecmint tty8 :0 10:39 2:10m 4:43 0.46s cinnamon-sessio
10. last or lastb commands
last/lastb commands display an inventory of the last logged in users on the system.
$ last OR $ last -a #show hostname on the last column
List of Last Logged Users
tecmint tty8 Fri Sep 22 10:39 gone - no logout :0 reboot system boot Fri Sep 22 10:36 still running 4.4.0-21-generic tecmint tty8 Thu Sep 21 10:44 - down (06:56) :0 reboot system boot Thu Sep 21 10:42 - 17:40 (06:58) 4.4.0-21-generic tecmint tty8 Wed Sep 20 10:19 - down (06:50) :0 reboot system boot Wed Sep 20 10:17 - 17:10 (06:52) 4.4.0-21-generic tecmint pts/14 Tue Sep 19 15:15 - 15:16 (00:00) tmux(14160).%146 tecmint pts/13 Tue Sep 19 15:15 - 15:16 (00:00) tmux(14160).%145 ...
To show all the users who were present at a specified time, use the -p option as follows.
$ last -ap now tecmint tty8 Fri Sep 22 10:39 gone - no logout :0 reboot system boot Fri Sep 22 10:36 still running 4.4.0-21-generic wtmp begins Fri Sep 1 16:23:02 2017
11. lastlog Command
lastlog command is employed to seek out the small print of a recent login of all users or a given user as follows.
$ lastlog OR $ lastlog -u tecmint #show lastlog records for specific user tecmint
Records of Recent Logged Users
Username Port From Latest root **Never logged in** kernoops **Never logged in** pulse **Never logged in** rtkit **Never logged in** saned **Never logged in** usbmux **Never logged in** mdm **Never logged in** tecmint pts/1 127.0.0.1 Fri Jan 6 16:50:22 +0530 2017 ..
That’s it! Do share it with us if you recognize the other command-line trick or command to look at user account details.
Conclusion
I hope you found this helpful guide. If you’ve got any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to use the shape below.
User Questions:
- What is your username?
Alternatively, as an account name, login ID, nickname, and user ID, username or user name is given to a user on a computer or network. This name is usually an abbreviation of the user’s full name or an alias.
- What is a real User ID?
Create a User ID that will be easy for you to recollect but hard for others to guess. Your User ID must be 6-16 characters and may contain most special characters apart from ` ‘ ” \ – ; () = and spaces. Your User ID and password can’t be equivalent.
- What is user ID Linux?
A UID (user identifier) may be a number assigned by Linux to every user on the system. This number is employed to spot the user to the design and work out which system resources the user can access. UID 0 (zero) is reserved for the basis.
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