How do I list the members of a group?

Question

How can I see all the members of a group in Linux?

score 226 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 31 '21 at 05:50

226

Use the commands:

getent group groupname

or

getent group groupname | awk -F: '{print $4}' |  tr "," " "

edited Dec 31 '21 at 05:50

alper

222

answered May 14 '12 at 13:47

us3r

2,667

1

So to add group, add user to group, change permissions of folder to group, and get all members of group, you would run the following commands respectively: addgroup programmers adduser donato programmers chown -R root:programmers idea-IU-141.1010.3 getent group programmers – Donato Jun 09 '15 at 04:56
chmod -R g+w idea-IU-141.1010.3 – Donato Jun 09 '15 at 05:14
Interesting find, "getent groups" (without any group specified) and "cat /etc/group" both give exactly the same output, at least on my system. – okolnost Oct 04 '16 at 22:43
This answer is not really complete. members <group> probably gives more what the OP is looking for. The difference is explained here Link – RichEarle Aug 19 '22 at 15:04
I am not sure this works well for non-standard accounts. Try the following two examples: groups root && getent group root and groups lxd && getent group users. Can anybody shed some light why in above cases root user is not listed as a member of a root group as well as lxd user (you need to have LXD/LXC installed) is not listed as a member of a users group where in fact both have groups assigned to them in groups? However groups pulse && getent group audio works as expected and pulse user listed as a member of an audio group in both command outputs. – igor Sep 17 '23 at 14:15
In addition to my comment above, you will find a mismatch in getent group groupname with compgen -u | xargs -I {} sh -c 'groups {}' for the following groups: audio, lp, nogroup, plugdev, users on Ubuntu 22 LTS. Is there an explanation for such behaviour? – igor Sep 17 '23 at 14:37

score 32 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 30 '19 at 16:14

32

You can do

members YOUR_GROUP_NAME

and it will list all the users in the group YOUR_GROUP_NAME.

If it's not installed by default:

sudo apt-get install members

edited Oct 30 '19 at 16:14

vvvvv

608

answered Dec 10 '15 at 08:53

anonymous

321

1

where did you find such command? – Jakuje Dec 10 '15 at 09:24
10

You may need to install it sudo apt-get install members – Ben Holland Dec 21 '15 at 19:40
members is installed by default in Ubuntu 14.04.5 – Janek Bogucki Jul 11 '19 at 13:55
3

it was not installed by default in 20.04 Desktop LTS, even after a successful smb and cif-utils installation – Marcelo Scofano Diniz Jan 03 '21 at 17:03

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 04 '16 at 22:18

One more way to check all the members of a group is by checking the /etc/group file which lists all the groups and its members

Example:

root:x:0:
daemon:x:1:
bin:x:2:
sys:x:3:
adm:x:4:syslog,nikhil
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:nikhil
floppy:x:25:
tape:x:26:
sudo:x:27:nikhil
audio:x:29:pulse

The first string (separated by :) specifies the group name and the last string specifies the user added to this group.

How do I list the members of a group?

3 Answers3

Linked

Related