NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CAVEATS | CONFIGURATION | FILES | EXIT VALUES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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GROUPDEL(8) System Management Commands GROUPDEL(8)
groupdel - delete a group
groupdel [options] GROUP
The groupdel command modifies the system account files, deleting all entries that refer to GROUP. The named group must exist.
The options which apply to the groupdel command are: -f, --force This option forces the removal of the group, even if there's some user having the group as the primary one. -h, --help Display help message and exit. -R, --root CHROOT_DIR Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only absolute paths are supported. -P, --prefix PREFIX_DIR Apply changes in the PREFIX_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the PREFIX_DIR directory. This option does not chroot and is intended for preparing a cross-compilation target. Some limitations: NIS and LDAP users/groups are not verified. PAM authentication is using the host files. No SELINUX support.
You may not remove the primary group of any existing user. You must remove the user before you remove the group. You should manually check all file systems to ensure that no files remain owned by this group.
The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the behavior of this tool: MAX_MEMBERS_PER_GROUP (number) Maximum members per group entry. When the maximum is reached, a new group entry (line) is started in /etc/group (with the same name, same password, and same GID). The default value is 0, meaning that there are no limits in the number of members in a group. This feature (split group) permits to limit the length of lines in the group file. This is useful to make sure that lines for NIS groups are not larger than 1024 characters. If you need to enforce such limit, you can use 25. Note: split groups may not be supported by all tools (even in the Shadow toolsuite). You should not use this variable unless you really need it.
/etc/group Group account information. /etc/gshadow Secure group account information.
The groupdel command exits with the following values: 0 success 2 invalid command syntax 6 specified group doesn't exist 8 can't remove user's primary group 10 can't update group file
chfn(1), chsh(1), passwd(1), gpasswd(8), groupadd(8), groupmod(8), useradd(8), userdel(8), usermod(8).
This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
accounts and shadow password files) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, send it to
[email protected]. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2024-06-15. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-13.) If you discover any rendering
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shadow-utils 4.14.0 06/15/2024 GROUPDEL(8)
Pages that refer to this page: gpasswd(1), groupadd(8), groupmems(8), groupmod(8), useradd(8), userdel(8), usermod(8)