How to List Users on Ubuntu

There’s no listusers command, which is why this comes up so often. Accounts live in /etc/passwd, and reading it is the answer to all four versions of the question.

Before You Start

• A server or desktop running Ubuntu 26.04, 24.04 or 22.04

None of this needs sudo. /etc/passwd is world-readable, despite the name: passwords moved to /etc/shadow a long time ago.

Step 1: List Every Account

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

root
daemon
bin
sys

Thirty-odd lines on a fresh server, nearly all of them service accounts that exist to own files and run daemons.

Step 2: List Just the People

Accounts made for humans start at UID 1000. Service accounts sit below it.

awk -F: '$3 >= 1000 && $3 < 65534 { print $1 }' /etc/passwd

ubuntu

The upper bound drops nobody, which sits at 65534 and isn’t a person either.

Step 3: See Who Has sudo

getent group sudo

sudo:x:27:ubuntu

The names after the third colon are the members. On Ubuntu that’s the group that grants administrative rights, so this is the list worth checking after somebody hands a server over to you.

Verify It Worked

The filter in step 2 is the one that can quietly lie to you, by hiding an account or inventing one. Your own login is a known-good answer, so check it comes back:

awk -F: '$3 >= 1000 && $3 < 65534 { print $1 }' /etc/passwd | grep -c "^$(whoami)$"

1

1 means your account is in the list exactly once, and the UID range is doing what it claims.

Conclusion

Four commands, and between them they answer who exists, who’s a person, and who can escalate. If you’re about to add somebody to that list, adding a user and giving them sudo is the next one.

If something here doesn’t match what you’re seeing, do drop me a line at [email protected] with the Ubuntu version you’re on and I’ll get it retested.