How to Remove (Delete) a User on Ubuntu 16.04

User management includes removing users who no longer need access, removing their username and any associate root privileges are necessary for securing your Ubuntu based Cloud VPS server. Deleting a user’s access to your Linux server is a typical operation which can easily be performed using a few commands.  

Pre-flight Check

• We are logged in as root on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS powered by Liquid Web!

Delete A User

Step 1: Remove the User

Insert the username you want to delete by placing it after the userdel command. In our example, I’ll be deleting our user, Tom.

userdel tom

Simultaneous you can delete the user and the files owned by this user with the -r flag.  Be careful these files are not needed to run any application within your server.

userdel -r tom

If the above code produces the message below, don’t be alarmed, it is not an error, but rather /home/tom existed but /var/mail/tom did not.

userdel: tom mail spool (/var/mail/tom) not found

Step 2: Remove Root Privileges

By removing Tom’s username from our Linux system we are halfway complete, but we still need to remove their root privileges.

visudo

Navigate to the following section:

## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
tom ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Or:

## User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
tom ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

With either result, remove access for your user by deleting the corresponding entry:

tom ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Save and exit this file by typing :wq and press the enter key.

To add a user, see our frequently used article, How to Add a User and Grant Root Privileges on Ubuntu 16.04. Are you using a different Ubuntu version? We’ve got you covered, check out our Knowledge Base to find your version.