Managing many accounts

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Finally, adduser will ask for the information to be presented when this account

is  fingered  by someone. finger is a program that searches (even over the net

when a different domain is specified) for the account specified, and returns the

personal information found for that account. adduser inserts the data into the

entry in /etc/passwd that it creates for fred. So, now if you finger fred you

will see something like the following:

Login:

fred Name:

Fred Smith

Directory:

/home/fred Shell:

/bin/bash

Office:

101, 555 1212 Home Phone:

555 5555

Never logged in.

No mail.

Removing a user

Just as you need to be able to add accounts to the system, it is also useful to

be able to remove accounts that are no longer needed on the system. Debian

provides the program userdel to remove a user account from /etc/passwd. With

the  r option, userdel will also remove the home directory for the account and

all its contents. So, to remove fred from the system and all the files from

/home/fred use the command:

userdel  r fred

The entry in /etc/group is not removed, and neither are any files on the system

that are owned by the removed account. When the uid gets reassigned to

another account, that account will end up owning those files. They should be

removed by hand, or have their ownership changed, which will be described

later in this chapter. Removing the entry from /etc/group will require root

privilege and the editor of your choice. Simply remove the line containing the

account name, in this case fred.