Linux user group listing

How can I display all users and groups with a command?

users and groups commands display users currently logged in, and groups a user belongs to respectively.

How to display a list of all users and all groups by command-line?

2 Answers 2

You can display with the help of compgen builtin command as follows:

To display all users run following command:

However you can also display all users by cut -d «:» -f 1 /etc/passwd .

Nice! it might be preferable to use getent passwd / getent group instead of cat’ing the local files ( getent should work for non-local accounts as well)

Well, on my ubuntu, I have some files created by docker mount with 999:999 as user:group , but unfortunately none of the above commands prints them.

Here we are going to use getent for the detailed the info

We can list the user with the following command:

We can list the group as follows:

To fetch detail a specific user

Replace the lalit with your user name. Lalit will not be in every system 🙂

You can read the more into about getent here

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How to List User Groups on Ubuntu Linux with examples

This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to list groups on Ubuntu 18.04 | 16.04 Linux systems.

If you’re a student or new user looking for a Linux system to start learning on, the most accessible place to start is on Ubuntu Linux OS. It’s a great Linux operating system for beginners.

Ubuntu is an open-source Linux operating system that runs on desktops, laptops, servers, and other devices.

Ubuntu and Windows systems allow you to be productive, easy to use, and reliable and enable you to install and run thousands of programs from gaming to productivity suite software for individuals and businesses.

This post shows you how to perform the primary task of listing groups on Ubuntu Linux.

Linux Groups:

There are two types of groups users can be assigned to. One is a primary, and the other is a second group that grants privileges to users to access specific resources.

Below is how a typical Linux user account is added and assigned group memberships:

User — A user with an account must belong to one primary group. The user’s primary group is typically named after the user account name.
Primary Group — The primary group is created simultaneously when the user account is created, and the user is automatically added to it. The file created by the user automatically belongs to the user group.
Secondary Group — This group is not required and is only there to give users access to other resources they don’t already have access to. Users can belong to one or as many secondary groups are possible.

The primary user’s group is stored in the /etc/passwd file, and the supplementary groups, if any, are listed in the /etc/group file.

List User Groups using the group’s command

Now that you know the types of groups for users, you can use the groups command to find the groups a user belongs to. Running the groups command without arguments will list all the groups the user belongs to.

Should output all the groups the account richard belongs to. The primary group is the first group with the same name as the user account name.

Ouput: richard adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare

To list all the groups a user belongs, add the username to the group’s command

This should output the same as above

Output richard : richard adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare

List User Groups using the id command

One can also use the id command to list group information about the specified user. It prints user and group information for the specified USER,

The command will show the username (uid), the user’s primary group (gid), and the user’s secondary groups (groups)

Should output the line below:

Output: uid=1000(richard) gid=1000(richard) groups=1000(richard),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),116(lpadmin),126(sambashare)

List Group Membership using the getent command

If you want to know a particular group’s members, use the getent command. This command gets entries from the administrative database.

To get a membership of the cdrom group, run the command below

This should output all the users who have access to the cdrom group.

Listing All Groups

To list the entire groups on Ubuntu, run the command below

That should output all the groups on each line

root:x:0: daemon:x:1: bin:x:2: sys:x:3: adm:x:4:syslog,richard tty:x:5: disk:x:6: lp:x:7: mail:x:8: news:x:9: uucp:x:10: man:x:12: proxy:x:13: kmem:x:15: dialout:x:20: fax:x:21: voice:x:22: cdrom:x:24:richard floppy:x:25: tape:x:26: sudo:x:27:richard audio:x:29:pulse dip:x:30:richard .

Congratulations! You have learned how to list groups on Ubuntu Linux.

Richard W

I love computers; maybe way too much. What I learned I try to share at geekrewind.com.

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How to find out what group a given user has?

This appears to be pretty useful as well. It has more verbose output than the ‘groups’ command, so if you need the group id/user id use this!

On Linux/OS X/Unix to display the groups to which you (or the optionally specified user) belong, use:

which is equivalent to groups [user] utility which has been obsoleted on Unix.

On OS X/Unix, the command id -p [user] is suggested for normal interactive.

Explanation on the parameters:

-G , —groups — print all group IDs

-n , —name — print a name instead of a number, for -ugG

-p — Make the output human-readable.

or just study /etc/groups (ok this does probably not work if it uses pam with ldap)

Below is the script which is integrated into ansible and generating dashboard in CSV format.

sh collection.sh #!/bin/bash HOSTNAME=`hostname -s` for i in `cat /etc/passwd| grep -vE "nologin|shutd|hal|sync|root|false"|awk -F':' '' | sed 's/[[:space:]]/,/g'`; do groups $i; done|sed s/\:/\,/g|tr -d ' '|sed -e "s/^/$HOSTNAME,/"> /tmp/"$HOSTNAME"_inventory.txt sudo cat /etc/sudoers| grep -v "^#"|awk ''|grep -v Defaults|sed '/^$/d;s/[[:blank:]]//g'>/tmp/"$HOSTNAME"_sudo.txt paste -d , /tmp/"$HOSTNAME"_inventory.txt /tmp/"$HOSTNAME"_sudo.txt|sed 's/,[[:blank:]]*$//g' >/tmp/"$HOSTNAME"_inventory_users.txt 

My output stored in below text files.

cat /tmp/ANSIBLENODE_sudo.txt cat /tmp/ANSIBLENODE_inventory.txt cat /tmp/ANSIBLENODE_inventory_users.txt 

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How to List All User Groups on Linux

Get better at user management by learning more about the existing user groups on your Linux computer.

Readers like you help support MUO. When you make a purchase using links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read More.

User groups on Linux help you define a set of permissions that you can then impose on other users. Unix and Linux come with some pre-configured user groups, and as an administrator, it’s easy to create additional groups to further categorize and manage users.

But before creating a new group, you’d want to know more about the existing ones. Luckily, there are several ways to list all user groups present on Linux, and you can even view the list of groups a specific user is a part of. Let’s get started.

Using the /etc/group File

The /etc/group file contains information on all local user groups configured on a Linux machine. With the /etc/group file, you can view group names, passwords, group IDs, and members associated with each group.

View the contents of the file using the cat command:

The output might be confusing at first. Where are the group names? And what are these «x»s and colons in the output?

The first column (the text before the first colon) is what you’re looking for. You can view a prettified version of the file and display only the group names using the cut command:

This simple list is both easier on the eyes and perfect for use in scripts.

You can also count the total number of local groups on your machine using wc:

To make things interesting, create a new group using the groupadd command and then view the total number of user groups on your system. As obvious, the count will increase by one and you’ll be able to see the group name listed in the output.

List Groups Using the getent Command

getent, short for «get entries,» is a Linux command for viewing the contents of system information files, also known as databases, on Linux. /etc/group, /etc/passwd, and /etc/shadow files are good examples of such databases.

Using the getent command to view user group information on Linux is straightforward. All you need to do is type getent followed by the file you want to view. In this case, it’s the group file.

The output of «getent group» will be slightly different from the cat /etc/group command. This is because getent pulls group information from other similar databases on your system (LDAP, for example).

Use the cut command to parse the output and display only group names:

The getent command is versatile. You can list the names of all users on Linux by getting all the entries from the /etc/passwd file and then parsing the output for user names.

View Group List for a Specific User Using groups

It’s hard to visually match user names with their groups using the previous methods. If you only want to list groups a particular user is a part of, consider using the groups command instead.

The basic syntax for the command is:

If you don’t specify a username, the output will display all groups for the current user. But for the sake of clarity, it’s best to supply a username as an argument.

To get a list of groups for a user named «testuser», run:

Groups Simplify User Access Control on Linux

Technically, the root user is the owner of the entire system and has permissions no other user possesses. Groups are a way for the superuser to categorize users, grant them authorizations, and impose restrictions to prevent them from performing undesirable operations.

Instead of granting permissions to each user, you can create a group and add all the users to it. Then, all you need to do is manage the permissions for the said group and the rules will be imposed upon the members automatically. This is one of the many ways to manage users on Linux and other Unix-related operating systems.

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