Index for Section 8

Alphabetical listing for U

userdel(8)
NAME
  userdel - Deletes a user login account from the system.

SYNOPSIS
  /usr/sbin/userdel [-r] [-t type] [-x extended_option] login

FLAGS
  -r  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
      directories under the home directory are no longer accessible.

  -t type
      Removes a local plus (+) or local minus (-) NIS user from the user
      database.	 The value of the type parameter can be + or -.

  -x extended_option
      The following extended_option attributes are available:

      distributed=n
	  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.

      local=n
	  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.

  login
      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 determined
  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 account
  is deleted from the appropriate database as specified by the system
  defaults.

  The default behavior on the system for the userdel command is distributed=0
  and local=1.	With these values, the system deletes the group from the
  local database by default.  Setting the distributed= and local= attributes
  to the same value (for example, distributed=0 and local=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 master
  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:

  0   Success

  2   Invalid command syntax or insufficient privilege.	 A usage message for
      the userdel command or an error message is displayed.

  3   An invalid argument was provided to an option.

  6   The login account to be removed does not exist.

  8   The login to be removed is in use.

  10  Cannot update the group database, but the login is removed from the
      user database.

  12  Cannot remove 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), usermod(8)

  Documents:  System Administration, Security