whoami question

rose_bud4201 · 01-10-2003, 12:27 PM

I'm (attempting) to write a bash script to do some of my more common tasks on boot up...however, I need to know which user is currently logged in, which theoretically I can do by running 'whoami'....but what exactly does that return? I mean,

Code:

if [ "whoami" = "<username here>" ]; then

doesn't work...no error message, but no result, either. What am I doing wrong?

unSpawn · 01-10-2003, 01:02 PM

Because on system boot you are not logged in as a user.
Can you give us a clue what you're trying to do?

rose_bud4201 · 01-10-2003, 01:18 PM

all I really want to do is run wmsetbg <insert image file here> to set my desktop background (silly, I know, but asthetics have their benefits)...but I don't want to run it for any other user except me...they can do their own shell scripting

Is this possible?

rose_bud4201 · 01-10-2003, 01:19 PM

btw, Mandrake 9.0 w/ Windowmaker (most of the gnome libraries are installed, though, to make my software-installing life easier)

unSpawn · 01-10-2003, 01:53 PM

Putting the command in your ~/.Xclients-default or ~/.xinitrc should work.

taivu · 01-10-2003, 02:01 PM

Can you not use $UID, which contains the Unix (numerical) UID?

rose_bud4201 · 01-10-2003, 02:31 PM

ok, to the last two posts: does ~/.xinitrc only run when I log in?? (yes, I know it's in home, but I'm still a little new at this so humor me please :-/ )If so, wunderbar, thankyouverymuch, problem solved :-D
But just for the sake of learning something new, taivu, how do I find out what my own UID is?

nxny · 01-10-2003, 02:53 PM

it is stored in your /etc/passwd as the third field in the line that starts with your loginname.
OR
use id from the command prompt.

id <loginname> to find out someone elses userid and primary group id
groups <loginname> to find out the groups that <loginname> belongs to.

rose_bud4201 · 01-10-2003, 03:03 PM

thanks much!