How to list all users and groups on Linux?

Question

And what's the difference between user:root and user:othergroup?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered May 10 '10 at 06:22

8

user:root is a combination of user user and group root. user:othergroup is a combination of user user and group othergroup.

answered May 10 '10 at 06:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 10 '10 at 07:29

0

From the commandline, simply look at the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group. The information you look for is in the first column.

answered May 10 '10 at 07:29

Aaron Digulla

1

This will fail if something like LDAP is being used. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 10 '10 at 07:32
4

Worse, this will *appear* to work but will fail to show any accounts or groups that are not present in those files. – bignose May 10 '10 at 08:10
Agreed :-) I'm starting to feel my age ;-) – Aaron Digulla May 12 '10 at 20:54
If you have LDAP, looking at those files will not get all groups, on those cases, command "getent group" will. – kpraes Jan 14 '14 at 15:51

2 Answers2