I keep forgetting this command, so I writing it here so I know where to find it. Getent will list information about users and groups on a UNIX/Linux system, including NIS and LDAP users, which is crucial networks with multiple nodes. For example to list information about a user named robert_felty, you can do:

$ getent passwd robert_felty
robert_felty:$1$iPJ.svD/$ce77I/wxh129FLt2Z7UOm.:5440:112:Robert Felty:/home/robert_felty:/bin/bash