1.\" Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 2.\" Guy Helmer, Ames, Iowa 50014. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer as 9.\" the first lines of this file unmodified. 10.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 11.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 12.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 13.\" 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products 14.\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GUY HELMER ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR 17.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES 18.\" OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. 19.\" IN NO EVENT SHALL GUY HELMER BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, 20.\" INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT 21.\" NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, 22.\" DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY 23.\" THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT 24.\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF 25.\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 26.\" 27.\" $FreeBSD$ 28.\" 29.Dd May 10, 2002 30.Dt RMUSER 8 31.Os 32.Sh NAME 33.Nm rmuser 34.Nd remove users from the system 35.Sh SYNOPSIS 36.Nm 37.Op Fl yv 38.Op Fl f Ar file 39.Op Ar username ... 40.Sh DESCRIPTION 41The 42.Nm 43utility removes one or more users submitted on the command line 44or from a file. 45In removing a user from the system, this utility: 46.Bl -enum 47.It 48Removes the user's 49.Xr crontab 1 50entry (if any). 51.It 52Removes any 53.Xr at 1 54jobs belonging to the user. 55.It 56Sends a 57.Dv SIGKILL 58signal to all processes owned by the user. 59.It 60Removes the user from the system's local password file. 61.It 62Removes the user's home directory (if it is owned by the user), 63including handling of symbolic links in the path to the actual home 64directory. 65.It 66Removes the incoming mail and POP daemon mail files belonging to the 67user from 68.Pa /var/mail . 69.It 70Removes all files owned by the user from 71.Pa /tmp , /var/tmp , 72and 73.Pa /var/tmp/vi.recover . 74.It 75Removes the username from all groups to which it belongs in 76.Pa /etc/group . 77(If a group becomes empty and the group name is the same as the username, 78the group is removed; this complements 79.Xr adduser 8 Ns 's 80per-user unique groups.) 81.It 82Removes all message queues, shared memory segments and 83semaphores owned by the user. 84.El 85.Pp 86The 87.Nm 88utility refuses to remove users whose UID is 0 (typically root), since 89certain actions (namely, killing all the user's processes, and perhaps 90removing the user's home directory) would cause damage to a running system. 91If it is necessary to remove a user whose UID is 0, see 92.Xr vipw 8 93for information on directly editing the password file. 94.Pp 95If 96.Nm 97was not invoked with the 98.Fl y 99option, it will 100show the selected user's password file entry and ask for confirmation 101that the user be removed. 102It will then ask for confirmation to delete 103the user's home directory. 104If the answer is in the affirmative, the home 105directory and any files and subdirectories under it will be deleted only if 106they are owned by the user. 107See 108.Xr pw 8 109for more details. 110.Pp 111As 112.Nm 113operates, it informs the user regarding the current activity. 114If any 115errors occur, they are posted to standard error and, if it is possible for 116.Nm 117to continue, it will. 118.Pp 119The options are as follows: 120.Bl -tag -width ".Ar username" 121.It Fl f Ar file 122The 123.Nm 124utility will get a list of users to be removed from 125.Ar file , 126which will contain one user per line. 127Anything following a hash mark 128.Pq Ql # , 129including the hash mark itself, is considered a comment and will not 130be processed. 131If the file is owned by anyone other than a user with 132UID 0, or is writable by anyone other than the owner, 133.Nm 134will refuse to continue. 135.It Fl y 136Implicitly answer 137.Dq Li yes 138to any and all prompts. 139Currently, this includes 140prompts on whether to remove the specified user and whether to remove 141the home directory. 142This option requires that either the 143.Fl f 144option be used, or one or more user names be given as command line 145arguments. 146.It Fl v 147Enable verbose mode. 148Normally, 149the output includes one line per removed user; 150however, 151with this option 152.Nm 153will be much more chatty about the steps taken. 154.It Ar username 155Identifies one or more users to be removed; if not present, 156.Nm 157interactively asks for one or more users to be removed. 158.El 159.Sh FILES 160.Bl -tag -compact 161.It Pa /etc/master.passwd 162.It Pa /etc/passwd 163.It Pa /etc/group 164.It Pa /etc/spwd.db 165.It Pa /etc/pwd.db 166.El 167.Sh SEE ALSO 168.Xr at 1 , 169.Xr chpass 1 , 170.Xr crontab 1 , 171.Xr finger 1 , 172.Xr passwd 1 , 173.Xr group 5 , 174.Xr passwd 5 , 175.Xr adduser 8 , 176.Xr pw 8 , 177.Xr pwd_mkdb 8 , 178.Xr vipw 8 179.Sh HISTORY 180The 181.Nm 182utility appeared in 183.Fx 2.2 . 184.Sh BUGS 185The 186.Nm 187utility does not comprehensively search the file system for all files 188owned by the removed user and remove them; to do so on a system 189of any size is prohibitively slow and I/O intensive. 190It is also unable to remove symbolic links that were created by the 191user in 192.Pa /tmp 193or 194.Pa /var/tmp , 195as symbolic links on 196.Bx 4.4 197file systems do not contain information 198as to who created them. 199Also, there may be other files created in 200.Pa /var/mail 201other than 202.Pa /var/mail/ Ns Ar username 203and 204.Pa /var/mail/.pop. Ns Ar username 205that are not owned by the removed user but should be removed. 206.Pp 207The 208.Nm 209utility has no knowledge of YP/NIS, and it operates only on the 210local password file. 211