Re: How to remove a user

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

David Teague <dbt@elentari.cs.wcu.edu> writes:

> I think you issue the command
> 
> 	userdel -r username
> 
> to remove both user, the home directory and files, but RTFM 
> to be sure.  

Note that this won't get any files the user might have in locations
other than their home directory, and I don't know if it deletes their
group (though it probably does).  To find and delete all the files the
user owns, you'll need something like this (as root):

  find / -name username -o -group usergroup > /tmp/usersfilelist

Then you can delete all the files in usersfilelist.

This probably won't catch things like the user's crontab or any "at"
tasks.  You'll have to handle those manually, and to be truly safe,
you need to lock the user out before doing this (I've forgotten the
magic command for that, but you can just change their password with
passwd and use who or w to make sure they're not currently logged in).

Hope this helps.

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930