Delete Linux User

Prerequisites

Before starting to remove the group, you must ensure that all the files and directories owned by the group is changed to a new group owner. Otherwise, it can very hectics and requires root account to do a bunch of clean-up works.

Change Owner

First, you need to identify the ownership of the remaining files by the user. Once done, you need to change the owner accordingly using chown command:

$ chown {-R} [user] [file|directory]

Example:

$ chown -R admin /media/localstore/datacare

Remove User

Once you're done with it, you can proceed to remove user. To do that, simply issue the following command with optional remove home or remove all files argument:

$ deluser [--remove-home|--remove-all-files] <username>

Example, to remove all files related to james, it is:

$ deluser --remove-all-files james

That's all for removing user from a Linux Operating System.