loginctl

systemd

loginctl

Control the systemd login manager

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. 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.

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.

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-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.

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.

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. 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.

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:

-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-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.

-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.

Exit status

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

Examples

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.