How to delete user account using Linux userdel command

Submitted by jinlusuh on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 10:02

The Linux userdel command is a very simple command. It just did what the name says, delete user. View the manual page and you can see that, in Slackware synopsis, userdel command has only one option:

    SYNOPSIS

    userdel [-r] login


    DESCRIPTION

    The  userdel  command  modifies  the system account files,

    deleting all entries that refer to login.  The named  user

    must  exist.   The options which apply to the userdel com-

    mand are:


    -r     Files in the user's home directory will be  removed

    along with the home directory itself and the user's

    mail spool.  Files located in  other  file  systems

    will  have to be searched for and deleted manually.

The -r option when used with userdel command will removed user's home directory and the mail spool. If there are other files in other directory, you have to remove them manually.

Let's practice using this command now. We are going to delete the user account we created just now, karim user account. As you can see from the manual above, the format for userdel is userdel -r login.

    [email protected]:~# userdel -r karim

How to delete user account using Linux userdel command

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