How to Delete a User on Ubuntu System

Ubuntu is a Linux operating system based on the Debian distribution. As with all other operating systems, maintaining user accounts is a routine task for Ubuntu system administrators. The essential steps for removing a user in Ubuntu include deleting the account and all of the files of user.

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This tutorial will help you how to delete user on an Ubuntu system.

Step #1: Delete New User on Ubuntu System

You find that you no more need to have a particular user on the ubuntu system you can delete them with a single command.

# userdel user_name

If you want to remove all of the files for the user, then use -r switch:

userdel -r user_name

Step #2: Remove Root Privileges to the User

If you have configured sudo privileges for the user you deleted, you may want to remove the relevant line using following steps:

# sudo nano /etc/sudoers
Or
# sudo visudo

Find the following lines:

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

Remove the username entry to remove root privileges for the corresponding user:

user_name    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Enjoy it!