Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Check existence of a login
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Check existence of a login Post 302172290 by xavier054 on Monday 3rd of March 2008 09:19:39 AM
Old 03-03-2008
MySQL

Quote:
Originally Posted by fpmurphy
No, in general, a shell does not know whether a particular user exists or not. The operating system may know that information.

As for tilde expansion, here is the relevant section from ksh93 s+.
Thanks, this answers my question. Furthermore I was wrong, and you are right: the shell knows only for users already logged at least once on the system. I could test getpwnam() on a set of PCs running Linux with PAM authentication, it failed for PAM logins of users that never logged on the machine. Same occurred with tidlde expansion.

BTW, I understand that getpwnam() manpage is confusing : it claims that /etc/passwd is parsed. But seen the output of last(1), and the outcome of my test, I understand it is rather /var/run/wtmp...

X.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

check for FILES existence

hi, I have a list of filenames and I want to verify if they all exist. I know "if filename" would do the trick but how do I go about a list of files? thanks (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: mpang_
3 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Variable check for existence ?

Hi , I have a script wherein i have a For Loop. Within this for loop i create a variable and assign it a value. The script goes to a For Loop only if certain conditions are met , which means the variable may or may not exists. However down the line in the script i have to check if that... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: samit_9999
2 Replies

3. Programming

C function to test existence of a login

Hi everybody, I need to check in C program whether a given login is known on the system. Is there any system function that could do this ? So far, all I could find is getpwnam(), which answers my problem by parsing the local password database. But won't work if a user is authenticated by... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: xavier054
2 Replies

4. AIX

check for file existence

Hello I am having a requirement like if there is no file in the directory then i need a message to pop on after the execution of the script. My script basically does for File in `ls -t $DIRECTORY | tail -1`; if there is no file the DIRECTORY then the script is simply exiting with out... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: dsdev_123
2 Replies

5. AIX

Check for File Existence

I have requirement where i need to search for files which start with SALESORDER and PURCHASEORDER. i need to process the files with SALESORDER first and then PURCHASEORDER. If SALESORDER files are not there i dont want to process PURCHASEORDER and i want to come out of script. I have written a code... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: dsdev_123
4 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

check existence of the path

Hi How can I check if the path exist or not? echo "Enter path:"; read my_path; ##I should check whether my_path exists or not.... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: tjay83
5 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to check for file existence?

i want to check if the file is in the directory or not, and also it should be handle error conditions, like missing files and report the error and exit. i did something like this: file ="hello" if !test -e "${file}" then echo "No such files exist!" exit 1 else do something....... fi ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: mingming88
1 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

To check for existence of a file

I need to check for the existence of a file *.log in a specific directory using a perl script. Presently am not in that particular directory. So i am using chdir ("/path/to/my/file) And then i am using the -e in an if statement to check if it exists. if (-e $File) {......} $File contains the... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: manutd
1 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Check the Files existence

Hi I have a requirement to check whether the files exists, then it will call other steps in shell script. I did ls *.csv|wc -l if then checking the count of the files should be more than 1 then it will call other steps. I am getting the error that too many arguements as there n... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: cnrj
13 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

File existence check

hi i wanted to check if the file exist or not(multiple files) DIRE=/home/V478 if ; then echo "file present" else echo "file not present" fi But i am getting the error as : [: unexpected operator/operand (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: ATWC
3 Replies
LOGIN(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  LOGIN(1)

NAME
login -- log into the computer SYNOPSIS
login [-fp] [-h hostname] [user] DESCRIPTION
The login utility logs users (and pseudo-users) into the computer system. If no user is specified, or if a user is specified and authentication of the user fails, login prompts for a user name. Authentication of users is done via passwords. The options are as follows: -f The -f option is used when a user name is specified to indicate that proper authentication has already been done and that no password need be requested. This option may only be used by the super-user or when an already logged in user is logging in as themselves. -h The -h option specifies the host from which the connection was received. It is used by various daemons such as telnetd(8). This option may only be used by the super-user. -p By default, login discards any previous environment. The -p option disables this behavior. If the file /etc/nologin exists, login dislays its contents to the user and exits. This is used by shutdown(8) to prevent users from logging in when the system is about to go down. Immediately after logging a user in, login displays the system copyright notice, the date and time the user last logged in, the message of the day as well as other information. If the file ``.hushlogin'' exists in the user's home directory, all of these messages are suppressed. This is to simplify logins for non-human users, such as uucp(1). Login then records an entry in the wtmp(5) and utmp(5) files and executes the user's command interpreter. Login enters information into the environment (see environ(7)) specifying the user's home directory (HOME), command interpreter (SHELL), search path (PATH), terminal type (TERM) and user name (both LOGNAME and USER). The standard shells, csh(1) and sh(1), do not fork before executing the login utility. FILES
/etc/motd message-of-the-day /etc/nologin disallows logins /var/run/utmp current logins /var/log/lastlog last login account records /var/log/wtmp login account records /var/mail/user system mailboxes .hushlogin makes login quieter SEE ALSO
chpass(1), passwd(1), rlogin(1), getpass(3), utmp(5), environ(7), HISTORY
A login appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. 4th Berkeley Distribution May 5, 1994 4th Berkeley Distribution
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:03 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy