[ILUG] Deleting Multiple Users at Once

[Pádraig Brady]

Kae Verens wrote:
> paul at clubi.ie wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>>
>>> while read user; do
>>>    userdel -r $user
>>> done < class_of_2006.list
>>
>>
>> And then students of the class of 2007 find they each may have access
>> to 'stale' files of a student of 2006.
> 
> 
> would formatting the drives and reinstalling the system be out of the
> question?
> 
> what if the /home is held on a hard drive which can be wiped or replaced
> at the end of the year?

`userdel -r` does delete users home directories and mail spools.
It does not delete files elsewhere on the system or on other systems
(which may be important especially considering NIS is used here).
If all the files you care about are in a user's home directory,
then `userdel -r` should suffice.

Pádraig.