Properly delete user in RHEL Linux

Simple example with 7 steps to have a user deleted properly from a RHEL Linux server.

1. Lock the User:

you can set an Expiry also on which the user account will be disabled
(syntax is usermod –expiredate YYYY-MM-DD username):

#usermod --expiredate 1 username

User will get below message :

Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator
Authentication failure

2. backup files from /home/username to /tmp/

#tar -zcvf /tmp/account/deleted/username.$uid.$now.tar.gz /home/username/


We can change the $uid, $now with actual UID and date/time. The userdel command will not allow you to remove an account if the user is currently logged in. Need to kill any running processes which belong to an account Use:

#pgrep -u username
#ps -fp $(pgrep -u username)
#killall -KILL -u username


3. Delete at jobs :

#find /var/spool/at/ -name "[^.]*" -type f -user username -delete


4. Remove any cron jobs:

#crontab -r -u username


5. Delete any print jobs:

#lprm username

6. Fine all files owned by a user :

#find / -user username -print
If any files is found with the ownership of that user, change the ownership:
# find / -user username -exec chown newUserName:newGroupName {} \;

#find / -user username -exec chown newUserName:newGroupName {} \;