Script run as root needs to get current user

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

I’ve got a script I have to run as root that needs to get the name of the current user. The two methods I know of

set FOO to do shell script "whoami"

and

set FOO to system attribute "USER"

will both return “root” when I run the script rather than the current user. Can anyone help?

#2

Can’t test at the moment, what does this return though?

tell application "System Events" to set FOO to name of current user
#3

Hi,

If you run the script as root, isn’t then the root the current user?

#4

Well, the script may be run as root in the background from my ARD server machine while a local user logged in as themself may be sitting in front of the machine. I want the script to get their username even though it’s running as root.

#5

This code will return the correct username if an actual person logged in, but will return root if a script running as root was used to type in the name and password and then hit return on the login screen.