loginctl(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLES | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

LOGINCTL(1)                     loginctl                     LOGINCTL(1)

NAME         top

       loginctl - Control the systemd login manager

SYNOPSIS         top


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

DESCRIPTION         top

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

COMMANDS         top

       The following commands are understood:

   Session Commands
       list-sessions
           List current sessions. The JSON format output can be toggled
           using --json= or -j option.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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. Specially, if the given
           ID is "self", the session to which the loginctl process
           belongs is used. If "auto", the current session is used as
           with "self" if exists, and falls back to the current user's
           graphical session. 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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 219.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

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

           Added in version 188.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       kill-session ID...
           Send a signal to one or more processes of the session. Use
           --kill-whom= 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.

           Added in version 233.

   User Commands
       list-users
           List currently logged in users. The JSON format output can be
           toggled using --json= or -j option.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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).

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

   Seat Commands
       list-seats
           List currently available seats on the local system. The JSON
           format output can be toggled using --json= or -j option.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

       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.

           Added in version 233.

OPTIONS         top

       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 "=".

           Added in version 230.

       -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.

           Added in version 198.

       --kill-whom=
           When used with kill-session, choose which processes to kill.
           Takes 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.

           Added in version 252.

       -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.

           Added in version 219.

       -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".

           Added in version 219.

       -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.

       --json=MODE
           Shows output formatted as JSON. Expects one of "short" (for
           the shortest possible output without any redundant whitespace
           or line breaks), "pretty" (for a pretty version of the same,
           with indentation and line breaks) or "off" (to turn off JSON
           output, the default).

       -j
           Equivalent to --json=pretty if running on a terminal, and
           --json=short otherwise.

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

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

EXIT STATUS         top

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

EXAMPLES         top

       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@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         top

       $SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL
           The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a
           higher log level, i.e. less important ones, will be
           suppressed). Takes a comma-separated list of values. A value
           may be 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. Each value may optionally be prefixed with one
           of console, syslog, kmsg or journal followed by a colon to
           set the maximum log level for that specific log target (e.g.
           SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug,console:info specifies to log at
           debug level except when logging to the console which should
           be at info level). Note that the global maximum log level
           takes priority over any per target maximum log levels.

       $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_LOG_RATELIMIT_KMSG
           Whether to ratelimit kmsg or not. Takes a boolean. Defaults
           to "true". If disabled, systemd will not ratelimit messages
           written to kmsg.

       $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.

           Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER (as
           well as $PAGER) will be silently ignored.

       $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.

           Note that setting the regular $LESS environment variable has
           no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

           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).

           Note that setting the regular $LESSCHARSET environment
           variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

       $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         top

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

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that
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systemd 257~devel                                            LOGINCTL(1)

Pages that refer to this page: systemctl(1)logind.conf(5)systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)pam_systemd(8)systemd-logind.service(8)systemd-machined.service(8)