Linux "loginctl" Command Line Options and Examples
Control the systemd login manager

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


Usage:

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






Command Line Options:

--no-ask-password
Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.
loginctl --no-ask-password ...
-p
When showing session/user/seat properties, limit display to certain properties as specified as argument. If not specified, allset properties are shown. The argument should be a property name, such as "Sessions". If specified more than once, all propertieswith the specified names are shown.
loginctl -p ...
--value
When printing properties with show, only print the value, and skip the property name and "=".
loginctl --value ...
-a
When showing session/user/seat properties, show all properties regardless of whether they are set or not.
loginctl -a ...
-l
Do not ellipsize process tree entries.
loginctl -l ...
--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 theleader process of the session or all processes of the session. If omitted, defaults to all.
loginctl --kill-who ...
-s
When used with kill-session or kill-user, choose which signal to send to selected processes. Must be one of the well known signalspecifiers, such as SIGTERM, SIGINT or SIGSTOP. If omitted, defaults to SIGTERM.
loginctl -s ...
-n
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.
loginctl -n ...
-o
When used with user-status and session-status, controls the formatting of the journal entries that are shown. For the availablechoices, see journalctl(1). Defaults to "short".
loginctl -o ...
-H
Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a username and hostname separated by "@", to connect to. The hostname mayoptionally be suffixed by a container name, separated by ":", which connects directly to a specific container on the specifiedhost. This will use SSH to talk to the remote machine manager instance. Container names may be enumerated with machinectl -HHOST.
loginctl -H ...
-M
Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to.
loginctl -M ...
--no-pager
Do not pipe output into a pager.
loginctl --no-pager ...
--no-legend
Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer with hints.
loginctl --no-legend ...
-h
Print a short help text and exit.
loginctl -h ...
--version
Print a short version string and exit.COMMANDSThe following commands are understood:Session Commandslist-sessionsList 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. Takesone 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-sessioninstead.show-session [ID...]Show properties of one or more sessions or the manager itself. If no argument is specified, properties of the manager will beshown. If a session ID is specified, properties of the session are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use --allto show those too. To select specific properties to show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used whenevercomputer-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 respectiveseat. 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 identifiersas arguments. If no argument is specified, the session of the caller is locked/unlocked.lock-sessions, unlock-sessionsActivates/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.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 selectthe signal to send.User Commandslist-usersList 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 ofthe session of the caller. This function is intended to generate human-readable output. If you are looking for computer-parsableoutput, 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 thosetoo. To select specific properties to show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsableoutput 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 atboot and kept around after logouts. This allows users who are not logged in to run long-running services. Takes one or more usernames or numeric UIDs as argument. If no argument is specified, enables/disables lingering for the user of the session of thecaller.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 resourcesattached to the user.kill-user USER...Send a signal to all processes of a user. Use --signal= to select the signal to send.Seat Commandslist-seatsList 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 arepassed the status of the caller's session's seat is shown. This function is intended to generate human-readable output. If youare 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 thosetoo. To select specific properties to show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsableoutput 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. Tocreate 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 adifferent seat, or use flush-devices.flush-devicesRemoves 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 resourcesattached to them.EXIT STATUSOn success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.EXAMPLESExample 1. Querying user status$ loginctl user-statusfatima (1005)Since: Sat 2016-04-09 14:23:31 EDT; 54min agoState: activeSessions: 5 *3Unit: user-1005.slice├─user@1005.service...├─session-3.scope...└─session-5.scope├─3473 login -- fatima└─3515 -zshApr 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 fatimaThere are two sessions, 3 and 5. Session 3 is a graphical session, marked with a star. The tree of processing including the twocorresponding scope units and the user manager unit are shown.ENVIRONMENT$SYSTEMD_PAGERPager to use when --no-pager is not given; overrides $PAGER. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-knownpager implementations are tried in turn, including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation isdiscovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing
loginctl --version ...
--no-pager.
$SYSTEMD_LESSOverride the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSETOverride the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).
loginctl --no-pager. ...