Methods To list User’s In Linux

Method 1: Using lastlog command

Step 1: Open your terminal in linux, to open it you can either go and search in applications or you can also use shortcut key that is CTRL + ALT + T this will open your terminal.

CTRL + ALT + T

Step 2: Final step, as we discussed above it’s only one command you need to the command is : lastlog

$ lastlog

you can see in the below screenshot we have a list of all the users that have never logged in on the system.

Method 2: Checking the /etc/passwd File

We will use a bash-script to find all the user’s who have never logged into system. below are the steps to follow:

Step 1: Open your terminal in linux, to open it you can either go and search in applications or you can also use shortcut key that is CTRL + ALT + T this will open your terminal.

CTRL + ALT + T

Step 2: Open nano editor by typing nano in terminal and then type the following bash-script. and save the file with .sh extension, after that we need to make the script runnable by using chmod command. follow the commands mentioned below:

nano filename.sh

!/bin/bash
# This is a script to check users who have never logged in.

# Loop through each username from the /etc/passwd file
for user in $(cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd); do
  # Check last login information for the current user using lastlog
  if ! lastlog -u $user | grep -q "Never logged in"; then
    # If "Never logged in" is not found, the user has logged in before
    # Move on to the next user.
    continue
  fi

  # If "Never logged in" is found, the user has never logged in.
  # Print a message indicating that.
  echo "$user has never logged in"
done

after you save the file by pressing CTRL + X and then enter on yes option. now we need to make the script runnable with command chmod.

chmod +x file_name.sh

Now, we can run the file just by the command:

./file_name.sh

Method 3: Using the “last” Command

You can use Last command to find out the user’s who have logged in the system. below is the command you can use with bunch of arguments to refine our results.

last | awk '!/logged in/'

The above command will list all unique usernames from the last command’s output, showing users who have logged in.

In Linux we have a term called user management, which includes all the tasks related to handling user who are logged in on system or may have been created for different purposes but never logged in. when it comes to managing accounts Linux is pretty handy it comes with lot’s of options for administration tasks. you can create users, add them to groups, manage their permissions throughout the system and files, and also lock or unlock the users. In this article we will see how you can list down the users who never logged in the system but are present or created. The process is pretty simple it’s just one command you need to type on your terminal and you will have the results.