List of all users and groups

Question

I'm trying to get a list of all users and all groups on Mac OS X 10.5+. How can I do this?

For example, the list of all users on my machine should return: _amavisd, _appowner, _appserver, _ard, _atsserver, _calendar, _carddav, _clamav, _coreaudiod, _cvmsroot, _cvs, _cyrus, _devdocs, _dovecot, _eppc, _installer, _jabber, _lda, _locationd, _lp, _mailman, _mcxalr, _mdnsresponder, _mysql, _pcastagent, _pcastserver, _postfix, _qtss, _sandbox, _screensaver, _securityagent, _serialnumberd, _softwareupdate, _spotlight, _sshd, _svn, _teamsserver, _timezone, _tokend, _trustevaluationagent, _unknown, _update_sharing, _usbmuxd, _uucp, _windowserver, _www, _xgridagent, _xgridcontroller, daemon, dave, nobody, root (that was painstakingly compiled manually).

How can I get that list (and the corresponding list of all groups) programmatically? I'm open to alternative (non-c based) solutions, such as Applescript, commandline, etc.

---

Update a long time later

TALlama's answer prompted me to investigate the API to Open Directory, and I found that this list can be easily acquired programmatically:

#import <OpenDirectory/OpenDirectory.h>
ODSession *s = [ODSession defaultSession];
ODNode *root = [ODNode nodeWithSession:s name:@"/Local/Default" error:nil];
ODQuery *q = [ODQuery queryWithNode:root forRecordTypes:kODRecordTypeUsers attribute:nil matchType:0 queryValues:nil returnAttributes:nil maximumResults:0 error:nil];

NSArray *results = [q resultsAllowingPartial:NO error:nil];
for (ODRecord *r in results) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [r recordName]);
}

That will log the usernames of every user on the system. Substituting in kODRecordTypeGroups will get you the list of all the groups.

The -[ODQuery resultsAllowingPartial:error:] method is a blocking call, so you'd either want to execute this code on a background thread, or use an <ODQueryDelegate> to aggregate the results.

Solution 1

The tool you want is almost certainly dscl. The shortest way to do it was already pointed out:

$ dscl . list /users
$ dscl . list /groups

If you want to output information about each user, though, use readall:

$ dscl . readall /users
$ dscl . readall /groups

And if you need to programatically parse said information, use -plist to make your life easier:

$ dscl -plist . readall /users
$ dscl -plist . readall /groups

Solution 2

Open Directory approach (from: http://rickcogley.blogspot.com/2008/11/listing-open-directory-users-on-os-x.html):

dscacheutil -q user
dscacheutil -q group

Take each line from the respective output that starts with "name:" strip off the "name:" and you have your list. If you do not have dscacheutil, you can use the manual commands:

root# dscl localhost list /Local/Default/Users
root# dscl localhost list /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1/Users

Old school approach for before Open Directory....(sigh): For list of users:

• Grab the /etc/passwd file from the system.
• Split it out by lines
• Split out each line based on ":"
• Take the first symbol for each line

For list of groups:

• Grab the /etc/group file from the system.
• Split it out by lines
• Split out each line based on ":"
• Take the first symbol for each line

Solution 3

Non-garbbled/no-tempfile commands:

# dscl . list /users
# dscl . list /groups

Solution 4

Back in the old days, we'd do this trivially with the NetInfo Kit, but today there's no tidy Objective-C way to do it. You'll have to dig in to the OpenDirectory API.

Solution 5

check out, for example, dsexport.

Here are some examples:

dsexport /tmp/export.out /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Groups

dsexport /tmp/export.out /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Users

the outputs are a bit rubbish, but something like sed could clean them up for you.

View more solutions

Comments

[Peter]

I don't think this works - grepping /etc/passwd on my mac doesn't yield my username.

[Dave DeLong]

+1 same here, but it seems like it has everything else. Thanks! I'll keep this open in case there's a better way.

[Dana the Sane]

I believe that Directory Services replaces /etc/passwd. The file is probably only there for legacy reasons.

[Dave DeLong]

Excellent! Just a simple pass with a regular expression has cleaned them right up! Thank you!

[Dave DeLong]

Wow, even better! I love this site! =)

[cheshirekow]

For some reason, this does not list all users, even if I run with sudo. It doesn't show any of the "real" users, just the system-ish ones.

[ImaginaryCake]

Works on my Lion install; what OS are you seeing it fail with?

[cheshirekow]

1.5.8. I figured it out. I didn't realize there were several different ways that osx can authenticate. Turns out I needed JacobTaylor's "Open Directory" approach.

[smokris]

Note: dscl -list is limited to 256 results, so this is not guaranteed to list all user accounts.

[smokris]

Note: dscl -list is limited to 256 results, so this is not guaranteed to list all user accounts.

[smokris]

Note: dscacheutil -q user and dscl -list are limited to 256 results, so this is not guaranteed to list all user accounts.

[smokris]

Note: dsexport is limited to 256 results, so this is not guaranteed to list all user accounts.

[Motti Shneor]

that's hardly a programmatic way to do it from my application. Any API?

[Motti Shneor]

Here too (MacOS 10.15.7) - "normal" Mac users, created via the "Users & Groups" UI (in System Preferences) don't appear in /etc/passwd file. Maybe there's another such file (same format) that extends it for the "Mac users" ?

[Motti Shneor]

Is there a programmatic API to get to the same functionality? I don't wish to create an external process via NSTask, collect and parse its text output every time my Cocoa application needs the list of users... maybe that's normal for UniX style programming, but not for Mac programming.