Removing users from your system is probably the simplest
operation you will do.
rmuser
The rmuser command deletes a user from the server. It will
also delete the user’s home directory as well if prompted Use the rmuser
command.
# rmuser joe
This will prompt you with:
Matching password entry:
:$1$RzJXr6ka$xdE88TjW4vpwthy/.Vtho/:1004:1004::0:0:Joseph
\
Carmichael Schmoe:/home/:/usr/local/bin/tcsh
Is this the entry you wish to remove?
at which you simply type a 'y' and enter. You will also be
prompted to remove their home directory:
Remove user's home directory (/home/)?
Note: If you reply
affirmatively, the home directory will be completely removed. Otherwise, the
directory will continue to exist.
If you know you want to remove everything, use the -y option for rmuser, which will answer 'y'
automatically at all questions:
# rmuser -y
Updating password file, updating databases, done.
Updating group file: (removing group -- personal group is
empty) done.
Removing user's home directory (/home/): done.
Removing user's incoming mail file /var/mail/: done.
Removing files belonging to from /tmp: done.
Removing files belonging to from /var/tmp: done.
Removing files belonging to from /var/tmp/vi.recover:
done.
Removing existing users by hand is not covered in this tutorial,
except to say that the password file entry, group entries, home directory, mail
spools, cron jobs, and other miscellaneous files need to be considered when
removing users.
rmuser does all of this for you, and does it well.
pw
The -r option is the
inverse of -m. While -m instructs pw
to create the home directory, -r tells pw
to remove the home directory and its contents without prompting. pw is slightly
more dangerous than rmuser, but perhaps more suitable for automation.
-r tells pw to remove the user's home directory and all
of its contents. pw errs on the side of caution when removing files from the
system. First, it will not do so if the uid of the account being removed is
also used by another account on the system, and the home directory in the password
file is a valid path that commences with the character “/”. Secondly, it will only remove files and
directories that are actually owned by the user, or symbolic links owned by
anyone under the user's home directory. Finally, after deleting all contents
owned by the user only empty directories will be removed. If any additional
cleanup work is required, this is left to the Administrative user.
# pw user del username
-r
If you notice that a home directory was not removed, it
was for one of the reasons stated above. You should check it out to see why
before completely removing the home directory.
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