Hi guys,

Super newbie here, I am trying to delete this user from my system. But instead of using 'userdel -r user1' i forgot to add the '-r' and just keyed in 'userdel user1'. Then I noticed in the home directory that the user is still there, but is removed from the /etc/passwd directory. I tried using 'userdel -r user1' again, but system responds as 'user is deleted'. How to respond to this? as I want to delete that user?

And additionally, from the home directory. A colleague of mine, instead of creating a user using the 'useradd' command, he decided to just use 'mkdir user' at the home directory. Is it ok to use 'rmdir user' at the home directory? without causing any troubles to the system? I need advise, thank you so much..

if you forget to use -r option it will just remove user account not home dir. in this case you need to remove home dir manually.

Sorry about that, I am really new here, I'm still yet to adjust hehe got any ideas/tips for me? Really much appreciate it.

Thanks for the advise. Can I just do a normal 'rmdir user' for this case?

You seem to be confused about the difference between a user (actually a user account) as defined in /etc/password and files and directories.

You have already deleted the user, want you are trying to do is delete files that were owned by the user (in this case the users home directory and contents).

You can remove the users old home and files in it using the rm command.

However, you should probably also use the "-f" option otherwise you will have to confirm before rm goes into each subdir. Be warned that this will permanently remove these files, so be careful (I have even avoided typing it explicitly).

If you suspect that the user also has files elsewhere on the system you can search for them with the "find" command (you should know the users numeric id). Let us know if you want pointers on using find.

Evo2.

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What you want to say i am also not understand. I see you all post but not find any post related to topic.

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It was clearly spam, and I reported it as such. Don't reply to posts like that.

Evo2.

Actually you have to rm -rf the home directory of the other user, not just rm -r, like so:

No you don't *have* to use "-f". Anyway, always a great idea posting commands that a newb can cut and paste and hose all their data.

Evo2.

Thank you guys, deeply appreciate it. I will now try it out.