rmuser(8)

NAME

rmuser - remove users from the system

SYNOPSIS

rmuser [-yv] [-f file] [username ...]

DESCRIPTION

The rmuser utility removes one or more users submitted on

the command
line or from a file. In removing a user from the system,

this utility:

1. Removes the user's crontab(1) entry (if any).

2. Removes any at(1) jobs belonging to the user.

3. Sends a SIGKILL signal to all processes owned by the

user.

4. Removes the user from the system's local password file.

5. Removes the user's home directory (if it is owned by

the user),
including handling of symbolic links in the path to the

actual home
directory.

6. Removes the incoming mail and POP daemon mail files be

longing to the
user from /var/mail.

7. Removes all files owned by the user from /tmp,

/var/tmp, and
/var/tmp/vi.recover.

8. Removes the username from all groups to which it be

longs in
/etc/group. (If a group becomes empty and the group

name is the
same as the username, the group is removed; this com

plements
adduser(8)'s per-user unique groups.)

9. Removes all message queues, shared memory segments and

semaphores
owned by the user.

The rmuser utility refuses to remove users whose UID is 0

(typically
root), since certain actions (namely, killing all the user's

processes,
and perhaps removing the user's home directory) would cause

damage to a
running system. If it is necessary to remove a user whose

UID is 0, see
vipw(8) for information on directly editing the password

file.

If rmuser was not invoked with the -y option, it will show

the selected
user's password file entry and ask for confirmation that the

user be
removed. It will then ask for confirmation to delete the

user's home
directory. If the answer is in the affirmative, the home

directory and
any files and subdirectories under it will be deleted only

if they are
owned by the user. See pw(8) for more details.

As rmuser operates, it informs the user regarding the cur

rent activity.
If any errors occur, they are posted to standard error and,

if it is possible for rmuser to continue, it will.

The options are as follows:

-f file The rmuser utility will get a list of users to

be removed
from file, which will contain one user per

line. Anything
following a hash mark (`#'), including the

hash mark
itself, is considered a comment and will not

be processed.
If the file is owned by anyone other than a

user with UID
0, or is writeable by anyone other than the

owner, rmuser
will refuse to continue.

-y Implicitly answer ``yes'' to any and all

prompts. Cur
rently, this includes prompts on whether to

remove the
specified user and whether to remove the home

directory.
This option requires that either the -f option

be used, or
one or more user names be given as command

line arguments.

-v Enable verbose mode. Normally, the output

inlcudes oneline per removed user; however, with this op

tion rmuser
will be much more chatty about the steps tak

en.

username Identifies one or more users to be removed; if

not present,
rmuser interactively asks for one or more

users to be
removed.

FILES

/etc/master.passwd
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/spwd.db
/etc/pwd.db

SEE ALSO

at(1), chpass(1), crontab(1), finger(1), passwd(1),

group(5), passwd(5),
adduser(8), pw(8), pwd_mkdb(8), vipw(8)

HISTORY

The rmuser utility appeared in FreeBSD 2.2.

BUGS

The rmuser utility does not comprehensively search the file

system for
all files owned by the removed user and remove them; to do

so on a system
of any size is prohibitively slow and I/O intensive. It is

also unable
to remove symbolic links that were created by the user in

/tmp or
/var/tmp, as symbolic links on 4.4BSD file systems do not

contain information as to who created them. Also, there may be other

files created in
/var/mail other than /var/mail/username and

/var/mail/.pop.username that
are not owned by the removed user but should be removed.

The rmuser utility has no knowledge of YP/NIS, and it oper

ates only on
the local password file.

BSD May 10, 2002

BSD