While working with systemd user sessions, you've probably used loginctl enable-linger and loginctl disable-linger commands to manage persistent user sessions. But what if you need to check the current status? Surprisingly, this isn't as straightforward as you might expect.

The proper way to check lingering status is using the loginctl show-user command:

loginctl show-user username --property=Linger

For user 'foo', this would return:

Linger=yes

or

Linger=no

You can also get this information from the user listing:

loginctl list-users --no-legend | grep foo

This shows output like:

foo 1000 yes

Where the third column indicates lingering status (yes/no).

For those who prefer filesystem inspection, lingering status is stored at:

/var/lib/systemd/linger/username

Simply check for file existence:

[ -f /var/lib/systemd/linger/foo ] && echo "Lingering enabled" || echo "Lingering disabled"

Here's a bash function to check lingering status:

check_linger() {
    local user=$1
    if loginctl show-user "$user" --property=Linger | grep -q 'yes'; then
        echo "Lingering is ENABLED for $user"
    else
        echo "Lingering is DISABLED for $user"
    fi
}

# Usage:
check_linger foo

Understanding lingering status is crucial when:

• Debugging user session issues
• Automating system configuration
• Managing long-running user services
• Troubleshooting systemd behavior

Be aware that:

• Root user (UID 0) always appears as lingering
• Non-existent users will show error messages
• Network users might have different behavior

---

Lingering in systemd determines whether user services should continue running after the user logs out. This feature is particularly useful for:

• Long-running background services
• User-specific daemons
• Persistent development environments

While loginctl enable-linger and loginctl disable-linger are well-documented, checking the current status isn't as straightforward. Here's how to properly query it:

# Check lingering status for current user
loginctl show-user $(whoami) | grep Linger

# Check for specific user
loginctl show-user foo | grep Linger

The command returns one of two possible values:

• Linger=yes: Lingering is enabled
• Linger=no: Lingering is disabled

For situations where loginctl isn't available, you can inspect the underlying files:

# Systemd creates this file when lingering is enabled
ls /var/lib/systemd/linger/ | grep foo

# Or more directly:
test -f /var/lib/systemd/linger/foo && echo "Enabled" || echo "Disabled"

Here's a bash function to automate the check:

is_linger_enabled() {
    local user=$1
    if [[ $(loginctl show-user "$user" | grep -oP 'Linger=\K\w+') == "yes" ]]; then
        return 0
    else
        return 1
    fi
}

# Usage example:
if is_linger_enabled "foo"; then
    echo "User foo has lingering enabled"
else
    echo "User foo has lingering disabled"
fi

If you encounter problems:

• Ensure you have proper permissions (typically requires root)
• Verify the user exists in the system
• Check if systemd is running with systemctl status systemd-logind