Check Whether a User Exists

Question

I want to create a script to check whether a user exists. I am using the logic below:

# getent passwd test > /dev/null 2&>1
# echo $?
0
# getent pa         


        

Answer 1

Using sed:

username="alice"
if [ `sed -n "/^$username/p" /etc/passwd` ]
then
    echo "User [$username] already exists"
else
    echo "User [$username] doesn't exist"
fi

Answer 2

By far the simplest solution:

if id -u "$user" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo 'user exists'
else
    echo 'user missing'
fi

The >/dev/null 2>&1 can be shortened to &>/dev/null in Bash.

Answer 3

Actually I cannot reproduce the problem. The script as written in the question works fine, except for the case where $1 is empty.

However, there is a problem in the script related to redirection of stderr. Although the two forms &> and >& exist, in your case you want to use >&. You already redirected stdout, that's why the form &> does not work. You can easily verify it this way:

getent /etc/passwd username >/dev/null 2&>1
ls

You will see a file named 1 in the current directory. You want to use 2>&1 instead, or use this:

getent /etc/passwd username &>/dev/null

This also redirects stdout and stderr to /dev/null.

Warning Redirecting stderr to /dev/null might not be such a good idea. When things go wrong, you will have no clue why.

Answer 4

This is what I ended up doing in a Freeswitch bash startup script:

# Check if user exists
if ! id -u $FS_USER > /dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "The user does not exist; execute below commands to crate and try again:"
    echo "  root@sh1:~# adduser --home /usr/local/freeswitch/ --shell /bin/false --no-create-home --ingroup daemon --disabled-password --disabled-login $FS_USER"
    echo "  ..."
    echo "  root@sh1:~# chown freeswitch:daemon /usr/local/freeswitch/ -R"
    exit 1
fi

Answer 5

I was using it in that way:

if [ $(getent passwd $user) ] ; then
        echo user $user exists
else
        echo user $user doesn\'t exists
fi