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Date:      Mon, 31 Mar 1997 21:07:49 -0600 (CST)
From:      Guy Helmer <ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu>
To:        Anton Zykov <zykov@dickinson.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: delete a user
Message-ID:  <Pine.HPP.3.96.970331210412.13491A-100000@popeye.cs.iastate.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95q.970331153007.7003B-100000@alpha.dickinson.edu>

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On Mon, 31 Mar 1997, Anton Zykov wrote:

> I'm confused.
> I tried to delete a user. 2 days later I wanted to create another user
> with the same name, but I've got an error message saying that the user
> with that name already exists. How I can delete the user permanently?

Never edit /etc/passwd or /etc/master.passwd directly; use vipw(8), which
properly locks the password file and rebuilds /etc/passwd, /etc/pwd.db,
and /etc/spwd.db after you are finished editing.

To automate the task of removing a user, I have written a utility
[rmuser(8)] that is included in FreeBSD 2.2 and later; for prior FreeBSD
systems, you can pick up essentially the same script at

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/incoming/removeuser2.tar.gz

Guy Helmer, Computer Science Grad Student, Iowa State - ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~ghelmer




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