How to list all users in a Linux group

Question

How do I list all members of a group in Linux  and possibly other unices

User · Answer

lid -g groupname   cut -f1 -d

User · Answer

getent group insert group name here   awk -F       print  4     sed  s     g    This returns a space separated list of users which I ve used in scripts to populate arrays   for i in   getent group ftp   awk -F       print  4     sed  s     g       do         userarray     i       done   or  userarray      getent group GROUPNAME   awk -F       print  4     sed  s     g

User · Answer

Here is a script which returns a list of users from  etc passwd and  etc group it doesn t check NIS or LDAP  but it does show users who have the group as their default group Tested on Debian 4 7 and solaris 9     bin bash  MYGROUP  user     get the group ID MYGID  grep  MYGROUP  etc group   cut -d     -f3  if     MYGID          then     get a newline-separated list of users from  etc group    MYUSERS  grep  MYGROUP  etc group   cut -d     -f4  tr       n       add a newline   MYUSERS  MYUSERS   n      add the users whose default group is MYGROUP from  etc passwod    MYUSERS  MYUSERS cat  etc passwd  grep  MYGID   cut -d     -f1      print the result as a newline-separated list with no duplicates  ready to pass into a bash FOR loop    printf   s n   MYUSERS    sort   uniq fi   or as a one-liner you can cut and paste straight from here  change the group name in the first variable   MYGROUP  user  MYGID  grep  MYGROUP  etc group   cut -d     -f3  printf   s n   grep  MYGROUP  etc group   cut -d     -f4  tr       n     n  cat  etc passwd  grep  MYGID   cut -d     -f1     sort   uniq

User · Answer

You can do it in a single command line   cut -d  -f1 4  etc passwd   grep   getent group  lt groupname gt    cut -d  -f3    cut -d  -f1   Above command lists all the users having groupname as their primary group  If you also want to list the users having groupname as their secondary group  use following command  getent group  lt groupname gt    cut -d  -f4    tr       n

User · Answer

Use Python to list groupmembers      python -c  import grp  print grp getgrnam  GROUP NAME   3     See https   docs python org 2 library grp html

User · Answer

getent group  lt groupname gt     It is portable across both Linux and Solaris  and it works with local group password files   NIS  and LDAP configurations

User · Answer

Here s a very simple awk script that takes into account all common pitfalls listed in the other answers   getent passwd   awk -F  -v group name  wheel      BEGIN        getent group   group name   getline groupline      if   groupline  exit 1      split groupline  groupdef            guid   groupdef 3       split groupdef 4   users            for  k in users  print users k         4    guid  print  1     I m using this with my ldap-enabled setup  runs on anything with standards-compliant getent  amp  awk  including solaris 8  and hpux

User · Answer

The following command will list all users belonging to  lt your group name gt   but only those managed by  etc group database  not LDAP  NIS  etc  It also works for secondary groups only  it won t list users who have that group set as primary since the primary group is stored as GID  numeric group ID  in the file  etc passwd   awk -F     groupname   print  4     etc group

User · Answer

Unfortunately  there is no good  portable way to do this that I know of   If you attempt to parse  etc group  as others are suggesting  you will miss users who have that group as their primary group and anyone who has been added to that group via a mechanism other than UNIX flat files  i e  LDAP  NIS  pam-pgsql  etc     If I absolutely had to do this myself  I d probably do it in reverse  use id to get the groups of every user on the system  which will pull all sources visible to NSS   and use Perl or something similar to maintain a hash table for each group discovered noting the membership of that user   Edit  Of course  this leaves you with a similar problem  how to get a list of every user on the system   Since my location uses only flat files and LDAP  I can just get a list from both locations  but that may or may not be true for your environment   Edit 2  Someone in passing reminded me that getent passwd will return a list of all users on the system including ones from LDAP NIS etc   but getent group still will still miss users that are members only via the default group entry  so that inspired me to write this quick hack       usr bin perl -T     Lists members of all groups  or optionally just the group   specified on the command line     Copyright    2010-2013 by Zed Pobre  zed debian org or zed resonant org      Permission to use  copy  modify  and or distribute this software for any   purpose with or without fee is hereby granted  provided that the above   copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies     use strict  use warnings    ENV  PATH       usr bin  bin    my  wantedgroup   shift   my  groupmembers  my  usertext    getent passwd    my  users    usertext        a-zA-Z0-9 -     gm   foreach my  userid   users        my  usergrouptext    id -Gn  userid       my  grouplist   split      usergrouptext        foreach my  group   grouplist                 groupmembers  group -   userid    1           if  wantedgroup        print group members  wantedgroup     else       foreach my  group  sort keys  groupmembers                print  Group    group   has the following members  n           print group members  group           print   n            sub print group members       my   group            return unless  group       foreach my  member  sort keys    groupmembers  group                  print  member   n

User · Answer

The following shell script will iterate through all users and print only those user names which belong to a given group      usr bin env bash getent passwd   while IFS   read name trash do     groups  name 2 gt  dev null   cut -f2 -d    grep -i -q -w   1   amp  amp  echo  name done true   Usage example     script  DOMAIN Group Name    Note  This solution will check NIS and LDAP for users and groups  not only passwd and group files   It will also take into account users not added to a group but having group set as primary group   Edit  Added fix for rare scenario where user does not belong to group with the same name   Edit  written in the form of a shell script  added true to exit with 0 status as suggested by  Max Chernyak aka hakunin  discarded stderr in order to skip those occasional groups  cannot find name for group ID xxxxxx

User · Answer

I have tried grep  sample-group-name   etc group that will list all the member of the group you specified based on the example here

User · Answer

Zed s implementation should probably be expanded to work on some of the other major UNIX   Someone have access to Solaris or HP-UX hardware   did not test those cases      usr bin perl     Lists members of all groups  or optionally just the group   specified on the command line     Date          12 30 2013   Author        William H  McCloskey  Jr    Changes       Added logic to detect host type  amp  tailor subset of getent  OSX    Attribution      The logic for this script was directly lifted from Zed Pobre s work        See below for Copyright notice      The idea to use dscl to emulate a subset of the now defunct getent on OSX       came from         http   zzamboni org             brt 2008 01 21 how-to-emulate-unix-getent-with-macosxs-dscl        with an example implementation lifted from         https   github com petere getent-osx blob master getent     Copyright    2010-2013 by Zed Pobre  zed debian org or zed resonant org      Permission to use  copy  modify  and or distribute this software for any   purpose with or without fee is hereby granted  provided that the above   copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies     use strict  use warnings    ENV  PATH       usr bin  bin      Only run on supported  os  my  os    os    uname -a          w-       unless   os      HU-UX SunOS Linux Darwin         die    getent or equiv  does not exist   Cannot run on  os n     my  wantedgroup   shift   my  groupmembers   my  users     Acquire the list of  users based on what is available on this OS  if   os      SunOS Linux HP-UX           HP-UX  amp  Solaris assumed to be like Linux  they have not been tested      my  usertext    getent passwd        users    usertext        a-zA-Z0-9 -     gm     if   os     Darwin          users    dscl   -ls  Users       chop  users       Now just do what Zed did - thanks Zed  foreach my  userid   users        my  usergrouptext    id -Gn  userid       my  grouplist   split      usergrouptext        foreach my  group   grouplist                 groupmembers  group - gt   userid    1           if  wantedgroup        print group members  wantedgroup     else       foreach my  group  sort keys  groupmembers                print  Group    group   has the following members  n           print group members  group           print   n            sub print group members       my   group            return unless  group       foreach my  member  sort keys    groupmembers  group                  print  member   n             If there is a better way to share this suggestion  please let me know  I considered many ways  and this is what I came up with

User · Answer

just a little grep and tr     grep   GROUP  etc group   grep -o            tr       n  user1 user2 user3

User · Answer

I ve done this similar to the perl code above  but replaced getent and id with native perl functions   It is much faster and should work across different  nix flavors      usr bin env perl  use strict  my  arg shift  my  groupMembers    defining outside of function so that hash is only built once for multiple function calls  sub expandGroupMembers  my  groupQuery shift  unless   groupMembers       while  my  name  pass  uid  gid  quota  comment  gcos  dir  shell  expire  getpwent                  my  primaryGroup getgrgid  gid                groupMembers  primaryGroup - gt   name  1            while  my  gname  gpasswd  gid  members  getgrent                  foreach my  member  split       members                        groupMembers  gname - gt   member  1                        my  membersConcat join     sort keys    groupMembers  groupQuery     return   membersConcat       groupQuery Does have any members     print  amp expandGroupMembers  arg    n

User · Answer

In UNIX  as opposed to GNU Linux   there s the listusers command  See the Solaris man page for listusers   Note that this command is part of the open-source Heirloom Project  I assume that it s missing from GNU Linux because RMS doesn t believe in groups and permissions   -

User · Answer

I think the easiest way is the following steps  you won t need to install any package or software    First  you find out the GID of the group that you want to know the users  there are a lot of ways for that  cat  etc group          the last column is the GID  id user                 the user is someone who belongs to the group  Now you will list all the user on the file  etc passwd  but you will apply some filters with the following sequel of commands to get just the members of the previous group    cut -d  -f1 4  etc passwd  grep GID    the GID is the number you got from the step 1   cut command will select just some  columns  of the file  the parameter d sets the delimiter     in this case  the parameter -f selects the  fields   or columns  to be shown 1 and 4 in out case  on the file  etc passwd  the 1   column is the name of the user and the 4   is the GID of the group which the user belongs   to finalize the  grep GID will filter just the group  on the 4   column  that you had chosen

User · Answer

Here s another Python one-liner that takes into account the user s default group membership  from  etc passwd as well as from the group database   etc group   python -c  import grp pwd  print set grp getgrnam  mysupercoolgroup   3   union  u 0  for u in pwd getpwall   if u pw gid    grp getgrnam  mysupercoolgroup   2

User · Answer

There is a handy Debian and Ubuntu package called  members  that provides this functionality      Description  Shows the members of a group  by default  all members    members is the complement of groups  whereas groups shows the groups a specified user belongs to  members shows users    belonging to a specified group            You can ask for primary members  secondary members  both on    one line  each on separate lines

User · Answer

getent group groupname   awk -F    print  4     tr     n    This has 3 parts   1 - getent group groupname shows the line of the group in   etc group  file  Alternative to cat  etc group   grep groupname   2 - awk print s only the members in a single line separeted with        3 - tr replace s     with a new line and print each user in a row   4 - Optional  You can also use another pipe with sort  if the users are too many   Regards

User · Answer

The following command will list all users belonging to  lt your group name gt   but only those managed by  etc group database  not LDAP  NIS  etc  It also works for secondary groups only  it won t list users who have that group set as primary since the primary group is stored as GID  numeric group ID  in the file  etc passwd   grep  lt your group name gt   etc group

[linux] How to list all users in a Linux group?

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