finger command in Terminal

Question

finger command in Terminal

Hello,

I tried to use the Unix command 'finger' in the Terminal (Apple Terminal). Via Fast User Switching were three persons logged in but the finger command gave me only one user. Only the user who had a terminal window open was displayed by 'finger'.

My question: which command can be used from Terminal.app to show the actually logged in users?

Posted on Apr 3, 2006 4:26 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 3, 2006 6:09 AM in response to Community User

Michael

Try this:

ps -ax -o uid=0,user|sort -u|awk '$1>500 {print $2}'

(The "uid=0" is just to get rid of the header line – sorry about the hack 🙂 )

This will only show "real" users, not "root" etc.

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Answer 2

Apr 3, 2006 7:04 AM in response to Community User

Hello,

Have you tried who or users?

--
Cole

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Answer 3

Apr 3, 2006 8:39 AM in response to Cole Tierney

Cole

who and users only tell you who is logged in to a Terminal session, not users logged in via the GUI.

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Answer 4

Apr 3, 2006 8:45 AM in response to Michael Conniff

I didn't realize there was difference. Thanks for the clarification.

--
Cole

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Answer 5

Jan 6, 2016 5:19 AM in response to Cole Tierney

Hello,

interstingly enough 'who' and 'users' sho wwho is logged on in a GUI session.

Thanks for the inputs

Michael

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Answer 6

Apr 4, 2006 2:09 AM in response to Community User

Michael

interstingly enough 'who' and 'users' sho wwho is logged on in a GUI session

Then they must also be logged in to a Terminal session.

For example:
<pre>

ibook:~ michaelc$ users
michaelc
ibook:~ michaelc$ ps -ax -o uid=0,user|sort -u|awk '$1>500 {print $2}'
michaelc
jdoe

</pre>Looking at the 'who' output shows not only the 'console' login, but the 'ttypn' logins. But users without a tty login are not listed: 'jdoe' doesn't have a 'tty' session: <pre>

ibook:~ michaelc$ ps -ax -o uid=0,user,tty|sort -u|awk '$1>500 {print $2, $3}'
michaelc ??
michaelc ttyp1
jdoe ??

</pre>The '??' is the console (or GUI) login.

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Answer 7

Jan 6, 2016 5:19 AM in response to Michael Conniff

Michael,

your right (and I'm wrong). Your ps-command sequence does the job whereas.

Thanks
Michael.

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