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TLDR: loginctl (tldr-pages)

Manage the systemd login manager.

  • Print all current sessions
    loginctl
  • Print all properties of a specific session
    loginctl show-session {{session_id}} {{-a|--all}}
  • Print all properties of a specific user
    loginctl show-user {{username}}
  • Print a specific property of a user
    loginctl show-user {{username}} {{-p|--property}} {{property_name}}
  • Execute a `loginctl` operation on a remote host
    loginctl list-users {{-H|--host}} {{hostname}}
  • Log a user out on all of their sessions
    loginctl terminate-user {{username}}
  • Display help
    loginctl {{-h|--help}}
LOGINCTL(1)                                   loginctl                                   LOGINCTL(1)



NAME
       loginctl - Control the systemd login manager

SYNOPSIS
       loginctl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [NAME...]

DESCRIPTION
       loginctl may be used to introspect and control the state of the systemd(1) login manager
       systemd-logind.service(8).

COMMANDS
       The following commands are understood:

   Session Commands
       list-sessions
           List current sessions.

       session-status [ID...]
           Show terse runtime status information about one or more sessions, followed by the most
           recent log data from the journal. Takes one or more session identifiers as parameters. If
           no session identifiers are passed, the status of the caller's session is shown. This
           function is intended to generate human-readable output. If you are looking for
           computer-parsable output, use show-session instead.

       show-session [ID...]
           Show properties of one or more sessions or the manager itself. If no argument is
           specified, properties of the manager will be shown. If a session ID is specified,
           properties of the session are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use
           --all to show those too. To select specific properties to show, use --property=. This
           command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsable output is required. Use
           session-status if you are looking for formatted human-readable output.

       activate [ID]
           Activate a session. This brings a session into the foreground if another session is
           currently in the foreground on the respective seat. Takes a session identifier as
           argument. If no argument is specified, the session of the caller is put into foreground.

       lock-session [ID...], unlock-session [ID...]
           Activates/deactivates the screen lock on one or more sessions, if the session supports
           it. Takes one or more session identifiers as arguments. If no argument is specified, the
           session of the caller is locked/unlocked.

       lock-sessions, unlock-sessions
           Activates/deactivates the screen lock on all current sessions supporting it.

       terminate-session ID...
           Terminates a session. This kills all processes of the session and deallocates all
           resources attached to the session. If the argument is specified as empty string the
           session invoking the command is terminated.

       kill-session ID...
           Send a signal to one or more processes of the session. Use --kill-who= to select which
           process to kill. Use --signal= to select the signal to send. If the argument is specified
           as empty string the signal is sent to the session invoking the command.

   User Commands
       list-users
           List currently logged in users.

       user-status [USER...]
           Show terse runtime status information about one or more logged in users, followed by the
           most recent log data from the journal. Takes one or more user names or numeric user IDs
           as parameters. If no parameters are passed, the status is shown for the user of the
           session of the caller. This function is intended to generate human-readable output. If
           you are looking for computer-parsable output, use show-user instead.

       show-user [USER...]
           Show properties of one or more users or the manager itself. If no argument is specified,
           properties of the manager will be shown. If a user is specified, properties of the user
           are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use --all to show those too. To
           select specific properties to show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used
           whenever computer-parsable output is required. Use user-status if you are looking for
           formatted human-readable output.

       enable-linger [USER...], disable-linger [USER...]
           Enable/disable user lingering for one or more users. If enabled for a specific user, a
           user manager is spawned for the user at boot and kept around after logouts. This allows
           users who are not logged in to run long-running services. Takes one or more user names or
           numeric UIDs as argument. If no argument is specified, enables/disables lingering for the
           user of the session of the caller.

           See also KillUserProcesses= setting in logind.conf(5).

       terminate-user USER...
           Terminates all sessions of a user. This kills all processes of all sessions of the user
           and deallocates all runtime resources attached to the user. If the argument is specified
           as empty string the sessions of the user invoking the command are terminated.

       kill-user USER...
           Send a signal to all processes of a user. Use --signal= to select the signal to send. If
           the argument is specified as empty string the signal is sent to the sessions of the user
           invoking the command.

   Seat Commands
       list-seats
           List currently available seats on the local system.

       seat-status [NAME...]
           Show terse runtime status information about one or more seats. Takes one or more seat
           names as parameters. If no seat names are passed the status of the caller's session's
           seat is shown. This function is intended to generate human-readable output. If you are
           looking for computer-parsable output, use show-seat instead.

       show-seat [NAME...]
           Show properties of one or more seats or the manager itself. If no argument is specified,
           properties of the manager will be shown. If a seat is specified, properties of the seat
           are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use --all to show those too. To
           select specific properties to show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used
           whenever computer-parsable output is required. Use seat-status if you are looking for
           formatted human-readable output.

       attach NAME DEVICE...
           Persistently attach one or more devices to a seat. The devices should be specified via
           device paths in the /sys/ file system. To create a new seat, attach at least one graphics
           card to a previously unused seat name. Seat names may consist only of a–z, A–Z, 0–9, "-"
           and "_" and must be prefixed with "seat". To drop assignment of a device to a specific
           seat, just reassign it to a different seat, or use flush-devices.

       flush-devices
           Removes all device assignments previously created with attach. After this call, only
           automatically generated seats will remain, and all seat hardware is assigned to them.

       terminate-seat NAME...
           Terminates all sessions on a seat. This kills all processes of all sessions on the seat
           and deallocates all runtime resources attached to them.

OPTIONS
       The following options are understood:

       --no-ask-password
           Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.

       -p, --property=
           When showing session/user/seat properties, limit display to certain properties as
           specified as argument. If not specified, all set properties are shown. The argument
           should be a property name, such as "Sessions". If specified more than once, all
           properties with the specified names are shown.

       --value
           When showing session/user/seat properties, only print the value, and skip the property
           name and "=".

       -a, --all
           When showing session/user/seat properties, show all properties regardless of whether they
           are set or not.

       -l, --full
           Do not ellipsize process tree entries.

       --kill-who=
           When used with kill-session, choose which processes to kill. Must be one of leader, or
           all to select whether to kill only the leader process of the session or all processes of
           the session. If omitted, defaults to all.

       -s, --signal=
           When used with kill-session or kill-user, choose which signal to send to selected
           processes. Must be one of the well known signal specifiers, such as SIGTERM, SIGINT or
           SIGSTOP. If omitted, defaults to SIGTERM.

           The special value "help" will list the known values and the program will exit
           immediately, and the special value "list" will list known values along with the numerical
           signal numbers and the program will exit immediately.

       -n, --lines=
           When used with user-status and session-status, controls the number of journal lines to
           show, counting from the most recent ones. Takes a positive integer argument. Defaults to
           10.

       -o, --output=
           When used with user-status and session-status, controls the formatting of the journal
           entries that are shown. For the available choices, see journalctl(1). Defaults to
           "short".

       -H, --host=
           Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a username and hostname separated
           by "@", to connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a port ssh is listening
           on, separated by ":", and then a container name, separated by "/", which connects
           directly to a specific container on the specified host. This will use SSH to talk to the
           remote machine manager instance. Container names may be enumerated with machinectl -H
           HOST. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.

       -M, --machine=
           Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to,
           optionally prefixed by a user name to connect as and a separating "@" character. If the
           special string ".host" is used in place of the container name, a connection to the local
           system is made (which is useful to connect to a specific user's user bus: "--user
           --machine=lennart@.host"). If the "@" syntax is not used, the connection is made as root
           user. If the "@" syntax is used either the left hand side or the right hand side may be
           omitted (but not both) in which case the local user name and ".host" are implied.

       --no-pager
           Do not pipe output into a pager.

       --no-legend
           Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer with hints.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

EXIT STATUS
       On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

EXAMPLES
       Example 1. Querying user status

           $ loginctl user-status
           fatima (1005)
                      Since: Sat 2016-04-09 14:23:31 EDT; 54min ago
                      State: active
                   Sessions: 5 *3
                       Unit: user-1005.slice
                             ├─user AT 1005.service
                               ...
                             ├─session-3.scope
                               ...
                             └─session-5.scope
                               ├─3473 login -- fatima
                               └─3515 -zsh

           Apr 09 14:40:30 laptop login[2325]: pam_unix(login:session):
                                  session opened for user fatima by LOGIN(uid=0)
           Apr 09 14:40:30 laptop login[2325]: LOGIN ON tty3 BY fatima

       There are two sessions, 3 and 5. Session 3 is a graphical session, marked with a star. The
       tree of processing including the two corresponding scope units and the user manager unit are
       shown.

ENVIRONMENT
       $SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL
           The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a higher log level, i.e. less
           important ones, will be suppressed). Either one of (in order of decreasing importance)
           emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, debug, or an integer in the range 0...7.
           See syslog(3) for more information.

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_COLOR
           A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty will be colored according to priority.

           This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal, because
           journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will color messages based on the log
           level on their own.

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_TIME
           A boolean. If true, console log messages will be prefixed with a timestamp.

           This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal or a file,
           because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will attach timestamps based on
           the entry metadata on their own.

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_LOCATION
           A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with a filename and line number in the
           source code where the message originates.

           Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to journal entries anyway.
           Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging
           programs.

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_TID
           A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with the current numerical thread ID (TID).

           Note that the this information is attached as metadata to journal entries anyway.
           Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging
           programs.

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_TARGET
           The destination for log messages. One of console (log to the attached tty),
           console-prefixed (log to the attached tty but with prefixes encoding the log level and
           "facility", see syslog(3), kmsg (log to the kernel circular log buffer), journal (log to
           the journal), journal-or-kmsg (log to the journal if available, and to kmsg otherwise),
           auto (determine the appropriate log target automatically, the default), null (disable log
           output).

       $SYSTEMD_PAGER
           Pager to use when --no-pager is not given; overrides $PAGER. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER
           nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn,
           including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is
           discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string or
           the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.

       $SYSTEMD_LESS
           Override the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").

           Users might want to change two options in particular:

           K
               This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when Ctrl+C is pressed. To allow
               less to handle Ctrl+C itself to switch back to the pager command prompt, unset this
               option.

               If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS does not include "K", and the pager that is invoked is
               less, Ctrl+C will be ignored by the executable, and needs to be handled by the pager.

           X
               This option instructs the pager to not send termcap initialization and
               deinitialization strings to the terminal. It is set by default to allow command
               output to remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits. Nevertheless,
               this prevents some pager functionality from working, in particular paged output
               cannot be scrolled with the mouse.

           See less(1) for more discussion.

       $SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
           Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if the invoking terminal is
           determined to be UTF-8 compatible).

       $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
           Takes a boolean argument. When true, the "secure" mode of the pager is enabled; if false,
           disabled. If $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, secure mode is enabled if the
           effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid(2) and
           sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3). In secure mode, LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the
           pager, and the pager shall disable commands that open or create new files or start new
           subprocesses. When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, pagers which are not known to
           implement secure mode will not be used. (Currently only less(1) implements secure mode.)

           Note: when commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or
           pkexec(1), care must be taken to ensure that unintended interactive features are not
           enabled. "Secure" mode for the pager may be enabled automatically as describe above.
           Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the inherited environment allows
           the user to invoke arbitrary commands. Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER
           variables are to be honoured, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too. It might be
           reasonable to completely disable the pager using --no-pager instead.

       $SYSTEMD_COLORS
           Takes a boolean argument. When true, systemd and related utilities will use colors in
           their output, otherwise the output will be monochrome. Additionally, the variable can
           take one of the following special values: "16", "256" to restrict the use of colors to
           the base 16 or 256 ANSI colors, respectively. This can be specified to override the
           automatic decision based on $TERM and what the console is connected to.

       $SYSTEMD_URLIFY
           The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in the
           output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override the
           decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions.

SEE ALSO
       systemd(1), systemctl(1), systemd-logind.service(8), logind.conf(5)



systemd 249                                                                              LOGINCTL(1)
loginctl(1)
NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION COMMANDS
Session Commands list-sessions User Commands list-users Seat Commands list-seats flush-devices
OPTIONS
--no-ask-password -p, --property= --value -a, --all -l, --full --kill-who= -s, --signal= -n, --lines= -o, --output= -H, --host= -M, --machine= --no-pager --no-legend -h, --help --version
EXIT STATUS EXAMPLES
Example 1. Querying user status
ENVIRONMENT SEE ALSO

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