Score:0

Ubuntu

You can modify user data with chfn (e.g. phone, room) but how can you just display that organisational data?

Bermar

11/15/22, 1:57 PM

Edit: @steeldriver provided the answer I believe. I think I found the reason why I did not get the output that I wanted in the first place. When I created the user I entered Full Name, Room Number, Work Phone, Home Phone and Other. But I overlooked an error message. Even though the organisational information (aka GECOS information as @muru made me aware of) is missing the user was created successfully it seems. The error message read:

chfn: fields too long
adduser: `/bin/chfn user_that_i_created' returned error code 1. Exiting.

End of edit.

Sorry for asking this, I really tried to find the answer myself and I seem to be unable to ask Google the right question to find the answer I need.

Ok, so we all know how to find user data which is interesting from a technical point of view, using /etc/passwd and grep or other commands. But this is not what I am looking for.

When you create a user, you are asked for room, work phone and other organisational data. You would change that data with chfn. But how can you just output that data? It must be in some file I guess? Can I do cat [file where organisational user data is stored] to see the phone number, room number, etc? How can I display that information?

1 + 1

users

adduser

user-management

muru

11/15/22, 2:01 PM

Are you talking about GECOS information? That's stored in `/etc/passwd`.

Score:2

Ubuntu

steeldriver

11/15/22, 2:07 PM

The fn in chfn stands for fullname, and the information is stored in the fullname field of the password database - or what man 5 passwd calls the

·   user name or comment field

(it's also commonly referred to as the GECOS field). So you can retrieve it using getent

$ getent passwd testuser
testuser:x:1001:1001:John Doe,101,234-555-1224,689-555-3785:/home/testuser:/bin/sh

If you're using local account management (rather than some kind of distributed management such as NIS or LDAP), the data is stored as plain text in the /etc/passwd file, and may be accessed directly with cat or less or with any of the various text processing tools ex.

$ awk -F: -v user=testuser '$1 == user {print $5}' /etc/passwd
John Doe,101,234-555-1224,689-555-3785

You can also use the finger command to access it in human readable format:

$ finger -l testuser
Login: testuser                         Name: John Doe
Directory: /home/testuser               Shell: /bin/sh
Office: 101, 234-555-1224               Home Phone: 689-555-3785
Last login Thu Jul  8 14:41 (EDT) on pts/2 from 192.168.1.4
No mail.
No Plan.

0 + 4

Terrance

11/15/22, 2:09 PM

WOW! I was just going to write about the `getent` command. Nice answer! +1 However, finger is not installed by default. :( But I definitely like the output of `finger` a lot more than `getent`. :)

steeldriver

11/15/22, 2:20 PM

@Terrance maybe the awked version is cleaner? that could be applied to the `getent` version as well of course

Terrance

11/15/22, 2:23 PM

Yeah, the `awk` version is a lot cleaner. You have given me some really good ideas on what to do with my team info here in my own office (well, really I work from home still but I have been looking for more ways to store tech info and locations). You have helped me TONS even though I am not the OP of the question. :)

raj

11/15/22, 3:57 PM

In the old times of the Internet ;), `finger` was commonly used to obtain information about remote users, you could just type `finger [email protected]` to get the info about user of almost any server. As far as I know, the GECOS field was meant specifically to be used with `finger` command.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: You can modify user data with chfn (e.g. phone, room) but how can you just display that organisational data?

TH: คุณสามารถแก้ไขข้อมูลผู้ใช้ด้วย chfn (เช่น โทรศัพท์ ห้อง) แต่คุณจะแสดงข้อมูลองค์กรนั้นได้อย่างไร

RO: Puteți modifica datele utilizatorului cu chfn (de exemplu, telefon, cameră), dar cum puteți afișa acele date organizaționale?

RU: Вы можете изменить пользовательские данные с помощью chfn (например, телефон, комната), но как вы можете просто отобразить эти организационные данные?

VI: Bạn có thể sửa đổi dữ liệu người dùng bằng chfn (ví dụ: điện thoại, phòng) nhưng làm cách nào bạn có thể chỉ hiển thị dữ liệu tổ chức đó?

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