Delete users in bulk

nycblkboy · 01-18-2011, 04:49 PM

Is there a way to remove users in bulk? Maybe by a range of user id numbers.

I help run a school server for our Linux class. I create temp accounts for tests and now I just want to delete them. I really should delete the old users too but the Professer likes to let them have access even after the class.

zer0signal · 01-18-2011, 06:29 PM

Maybe use some type of script to take input from you about who you want to useradd -m "username" into the system while taking that variable that was used for the input and redirecting it to another file >> users.txt That is to be read later when making a script to remove userdel -f < /location/users.txt

obviously ran as either sudo or root.

the quickest idea I can come up with...

nycblkboy · 01-18-2011, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zer0signal

Maybe use some type of script to take input from you about who you want to useradd -m "username" into the system while taking that variable that was used for the input and redirecting it to another file >> users.txt That is to be read later when making a script to remove userdel -f < /location/users.txt

obviously ran as either sudo or root.

the quickest idea I can come up with...

Good idea i'm going to add a few accounts and try it.
Do you know if userdel -f xkcd* would work? Where xkcd* is a list of users whose username begins with xkcd.

zer0signal · 01-18-2011, 06:54 PM

I don't think you can use the wildcard like that. =(
But I am not a great scripter, where I would look is into into a loop function for userdel, that would just keep that script running till it reached the end of user.txt.

frndrfoe · 01-18-2011, 07:46 PM

You could build the list from /etc/passwd

Code:

awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd |grep '^xkcd' >users.txt

or from a directory service

Code:

getent passwd | awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' | grep '^xkcd' >users.txt

zer0signal · 01-18-2011, 07:58 PM

nice! I need to play around with awk and sed more! thx for the info frndrfoe!

nycblkboy · 01-18-2011, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frndrfoe

You could build the list from /etc/passwd

Code:

awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd |grep '^xkcd' >users.txt

or from a directory service

Code:

getent passwd | awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' | grep '^xkcd' >users.txt

Buliding the list not be a problem. I can just take the passwd file import it into excel and erase the info i don't need and save it as text. But thanks I keep forgetting how powerful Unix is.