How to find a user s home directory on linux or unix

Question

How do I find the home directory of an arbitrary user from within Grails   On Linux it s often  home user   However  on some OS s  like OpenSolaris for example  the path is  export home user

User · Answer

Find a Java wrapper for getpwuid getpwnam 3  functions  they ask the system for user information by uid or by login name and you get back all info including the default home directory

User · Answer

You can use the environment variable  HOME for that

User · Answer

If your are trying to do this for a user name that you cannot hard code  it can be challenging  Sure echo  rbronosky would tell you the path to my home dir  home rbronosky  but what if rbronosky is in a variable  If you do name rbronosky  echo   name you get  rbronosky  Here is a real world case and the solution   You have a script that the user has to run via sudo  The script has to access the user s home folder  You can t reference    ssh or else it will expand to  root  ssh  Instead you do     Up near the top of your script add export HOME   bash  lt  lt  lt   echo    SUDO USER -      Then you can use  HOME like you would expect cat rsa key pub  gt  gt   HOME  ssh authorized keys   The beauty of it is that if the script is not run as sudo then  SUDO USER is empty  so it s basically the same thing as doing  echo     It still works as you  expect   If you use set -o nounset  which you should be using  the variable reference   SUDO USER -  will default to blank  where  SUDO USER or   SUDO USER  would give an error  because it is unset  if not run via sudo

User · Answer

Can you parse  etc passwd    e g     cat  etc passwd   awk -F    printf  User  s Home  s n     1   6

User · Answer

For UNIX-Like systems you might want to execute  echo  username  using the shell  so use Runtime exec   to run    bin sh    -c    echo  username

User · Answer

To find the home directory for user FOO on a UNIX-ish system  use  FOO  For the current user  use

User · Answer

To find the home directory for user FOO on a UNIX-ish system  use  FOO  For the current user  use

User · Answer

eval echo   SUDO USER  might work

User · Answer

eval echo   SUDO USER  might work

User · Answer

Can you parse  etc passwd    e g     cat  etc passwd   awk -F    printf  User  s Home  s n     1   6

User · Answer

If you want to find a specific user s home directory  I don t believe you can do it directly   When I ve needed to do this before from Java I had to write some JNI native code that wrapped the UNIX getpwXXX   family of calls

User · Answer

To find the home directory for user FOO on a UNIX-ish system  use  FOO  For the current user  use

User · Answer

Try this on Java   System out println  OS      System getProperty  os name        USER DIRECTORY      System getProperty  user home

User · Answer

The userdir prefix  e g     home  or   export home   could be a configuration item   Then the app can append the arbitrary user name to that path   Caveat  This doesn t intelligently interact with the OS  so you d be out of luck if it were a Windows system with userdirs on different drives  or on Unix with a home dir layout like  home f foo   home b bar

User · Answer

You can use the environment variable  HOME for that

User · Answer

The userdir prefix  e g     home  or   export home   could be a configuration item   Then the app can append the arbitrary user name to that path   Caveat  This doesn t intelligently interact with the OS  so you d be out of luck if it were a Windows system with userdirs on different drives  or on Unix with a home dir layout like  home f foo   home b bar

User · Answer

The userdir prefix  e g     home  or   export home   could be a configuration item   Then the app can append the arbitrary user name to that path   Caveat  This doesn t intelligently interact with the OS  so you d be out of luck if it were a Windows system with userdirs on different drives  or on Unix with a home dir layout like  home f foo   home b bar

User · Answer

Can you parse  etc passwd    e g     cat  etc passwd   awk -F    printf  User  s Home  s n     1   6

User · Answer

If your are trying to do this for a user name that you cannot hard code  it can be challenging  Sure echo  rbronosky would tell you the path to my home dir  home rbronosky  but what if rbronosky is in a variable  If you do name rbronosky  echo   name you get  rbronosky  Here is a real world case and the solution   You have a script that the user has to run via sudo  The script has to access the user s home folder  You can t reference    ssh or else it will expand to  root  ssh  Instead you do     Up near the top of your script add export HOME   bash  lt  lt  lt   echo    SUDO USER -      Then you can use  HOME like you would expect cat rsa key pub  gt  gt   HOME  ssh authorized keys   The beauty of it is that if the script is not run as sudo then  SUDO USER is empty  so it s basically the same thing as doing  echo     It still works as you  expect   If you use set -o nounset  which you should be using  the variable reference   SUDO USER -  will default to blank  where  SUDO USER or   SUDO USER  would give an error  because it is unset  if not run via sudo

User · Answer

Can you parse  etc passwd    e g     cat  etc passwd   awk -F    printf  User  s Home  s n     1   6

User · Answer

For an arbitrary user  as the webserver   private String getUserHome String userName  throws IOException      return new BufferedReader new InputStreamReader Runtime getRuntime   exec new String    sh    -c    echo      userName   getInputStream     readLine

User · Answer

I assume you want to find the home directory of a DIFFERENT user   Obviously getting the  user home  property would be the easiest way to get the current user home directory   To get an arbitrary user home directory  it takes a bit of finesse with the command line   String   command      bin sh    -c    echo  root      substitute desired username Process outsideProcess   rt exec command   outsideProcess waitFor    String tempResult  StringBuilder sb   new StringBuilder    while  tempResult   br readLine       null  sb append tempResult   br close    return sb toString   trim      Now technically  we should have a thread waiting on the stdout and stderr so the buffers don t fill up and lock up the process  but I d sure hope the buffer could at least hold a single username   Also  you might want to check the result to see if it starts with  root  or whatever username you used  just to make sure the user does exist and it evaluated correctly   Hope that helps   Vote for this answer if it does as I m new to contributing to SO and could use the points

User · Answer

You can use the environment variable  HOME for that

User · Answer

I assume you want to find the home directory of a DIFFERENT user   Obviously getting the  user home  property would be the easiest way to get the current user home directory   To get an arbitrary user home directory  it takes a bit of finesse with the command line   String   command      bin sh    -c    echo  root      substitute desired username Process outsideProcess   rt exec command   outsideProcess waitFor    String tempResult  StringBuilder sb   new StringBuilder    while  tempResult   br readLine       null  sb append tempResult   br close    return sb toString   trim      Now technically  we should have a thread waiting on the stdout and stderr so the buffers don t fill up and lock up the process  but I d sure hope the buffer could at least hold a single username   Also  you might want to check the result to see if it starts with  root  or whatever username you used  just to make sure the user does exist and it evaluated correctly   Hope that helps   Vote for this answer if it does as I m new to contributing to SO and could use the points

User · Answer

If you want to find a specific user s home directory  I don t believe you can do it directly   When I ve needed to do this before from Java I had to write some JNI native code that wrapped the UNIX getpwXXX   family of calls

User · Answer

For UNIX-Like systems you might want to execute  echo  username  using the shell  so use Runtime exec   to run    bin sh    -c    echo  username

User · Answer

If you want to find a specific user s home directory  I don t believe you can do it directly   When I ve needed to do this before from Java I had to write some JNI native code that wrapped the UNIX getpwXXX   family of calls

User · Answer

For UNIX-Like systems you might want to execute  echo  username  using the shell  so use Runtime exec   to run    bin sh    -c    echo  username

User · Answer

You can use the environment variable  HOME for that

User · Answer

Find a Java wrapper for getpwuid getpwnam 3  functions  they ask the system for user information by uid or by login name and you get back all info including the default home directory

User · Answer

Normally you use the statement  String userHome   System getProperty   user home       to get the home directory of the user on any platform  See the method documentation for getProperty to see what else you can get    There may be access problems you might want to avoid by using this workaround  Using a security policy file

User · Answer

Find a Java wrapper for getpwuid getpwnam 3  functions  they ask the system for user information by uid or by login name and you get back all info including the default home directory

User · Answer

Normally you use the statement  String userHome   System getProperty   user home       to get the home directory of the user on any platform  See the method documentation for getProperty to see what else you can get    There may be access problems you might want to avoid by using this workaround  Using a security policy file

User · Answer

Normally you use the statement  String userHome   System getProperty   user home       to get the home directory of the user on any platform  See the method documentation for getProperty to see what else you can get    There may be access problems you might want to avoid by using this workaround  Using a security policy file

User · Answer

The userdir prefix  e g     home  or   export home   could be a configuration item   Then the app can append the arbitrary user name to that path   Caveat  This doesn t intelligently interact with the OS  so you d be out of luck if it were a Windows system with userdirs on different drives  or on Unix with a home dir layout like  home f foo   home b bar

User · Answer

For UNIX-Like systems you might want to execute  echo  username  using the shell  so use Runtime exec   to run    bin sh    -c    echo  username

User · Answer

For an arbitrary user  as the webserver   private String getUserHome String userName  throws IOException      return new BufferedReader new InputStreamReader Runtime getRuntime   exec new String    sh    -c    echo      userName   getInputStream     readLine

User · Answer

Find a Java wrapper for getpwuid getpwnam 3  functions  they ask the system for user information by uid or by login name and you get back all info including the default home directory

User · Answer

If you want to find a specific user s home directory  I don t believe you can do it directly   When I ve needed to do this before from Java I had to write some JNI native code that wrapped the UNIX getpwXXX   family of calls

User · Answer

Try this on Java   System out println  OS      System getProperty  os name        USER DIRECTORY      System getProperty  user home

User · Answer

To find the home directory for user FOO on a UNIX-ish system  use  FOO  For the current user  use

User · Answer

Normally you use the statement  String userHome   System getProperty   user home       to get the home directory of the user on any platform  See the method documentation for getProperty to see what else you can get    There may be access problems you might want to avoid by using this workaround  Using a security policy file

[java] How to find a user's home directory on linux or unix?

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