193

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

3 Answers 3

225

Use the commands:

getent group groupname

or

getent group groupname | awk -F: '{print $4}' |  tr "," " "
6
  • 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 9, 2015 at 4:56
  • chmod -R g+w idea-IU-141.1010.3
    – Donato
    Jun 9, 2015 at 5:14
  • 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 4, 2016 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, 2022 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, 2023 at 14:15
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
4
  • 1
    where did you find such command?
    – Jakuje
    Dec 10, 2015 at 9:24
  • 10
    You may need to install it sudo apt-get install members Dec 21, 2015 at 19:40
  • members is installed by default in Ubuntu 14.04.5 Jul 11, 2019 at 13:55
  • 3
    it was not installed by default in 20.04 Desktop LTS, even after a successful smb and cif-utils installation Jan 3, 2021 at 17:03
20

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.

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