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userdel(8) System Manager's Manual userdel(8) NAME userdel - Deletes a user login account from the system. SYNOPSIS /usr/sbin/userdel [-r] [-t type] [-x extended_option] login FLAGS Removes a user's home directory from the system. This directory must exist and must be owned by the user whose login account is being deleted. After successful execution of this command, the files and di- rectories under the home directory are no longer accessible. Removes a local plus (+) or local minus (-) NIS user from the user database. The value of the type parameter can be + or -. The following extended_op- tion attributes are available: Indicates whether or not the account is distributed. The value of the distributed=n attribute can be 0 or 1. If set to 0, the account is deleted from the local database. If set to 1, the account is deleted from the NIS master database on the running system. Indicates whether or not the account is local. The value of the local=n attribute can be 0 or 1. If set to 1, the account is deleted from the local database. If set to 0, the account information is deleted from the NIS master database. Specifies an existing login account on the system. DESCRIPTION The userdel command deletes a user's login account from the system and makes the login-related changes in the appropriate system files deter- mined by the current level of security. Additionally, the files and directories contained under the user's home directory can be removed from the system. With the -x flag, the system administrator can specify whether the user login account to be deleted is local or whether it resides in the NIS master database. If the -x flag is not specified, the user login ac- count is deleted from the appropriate database as specified by the sys- tem defaults. The default behavior on the system for the userdel command is distrib- uted=0 and local=1. With these values, the system deletes the group from the local database by default. Setting the distributed= and lo- cal= attributes to the same value (for example, distributed=0 and lo- cal=0) produces an error. You must have superuser privilege to execute this command. EXAMPLES The following example removes the local plus (+) user, newuser1: % userdel -t + newuser1 The following example removes the NIS user, newuser4, from the NIS mas- ter database: % userdel -x distributed=1 newuser4 The following example deletes the user, xyz, and removes the user's home directory: % userdel -r xyz EXIT VALUES The userdel command exits with one of the following values: Success In- valid command syntax or insufficient privilege. A usage message for the userdel command or an error message is displayed. An invalid argu- ment was provided to an option. The login account to be removed does not exist. The login to be removed is in use. Cannot update the group database, but the login is removed from the user database. Cannot re- move or otherwise modify the home directory. FILES The userdel command operates on files for the specific level of system security. RELATED INFORMATION Commands: groupadd(8), groupdel(8), groupmod(8), useradd(8), user- mod(8) Documents: System Administration, Security delim off userdel(8)