I had a thread going titled ID Creation" back on 5/31/05, but Google
keeps erroring out when I try to add to it so I'm having to start
another one. It is a new question anyway.

I have added users to the security group that I want to be able to
create user IDs. My new question is on deleting users. The users in
the security group can remove the users either through smit or with
rmuser -p <userID>, my problem is that I also need the users' home
directories removed. How can I get them removed without giving out
root access?

Thanks.

On 3 Jun 2005 12:00:36 -0700, "TB" <chessgame@gmail.com> wrote:

>I had a thread going titled ID Creation" back on 5/31/05, but Google
>keeps erroring out when I try to add to it so I'm having to start
>another one. It is a new question anyway.
>
>I have added users to the security group that I want to be able to
>create user IDs. My new question is on deleting users. The users in
>the security group can remove the users either through smit or with
>rmuser -p <userID>, my problem is that I also need the users' home
>directories removed. How can I get them removed without giving out
>root access?
>
>Thanks.

Consider using the 'sudo' utility. With it, the users you chose can
run certain instructions as root.
So, you could allow the users in the security group to remove the
directories in the structure /home, for instance.


Saludos,
Joe

#####

Leyendo: Futureland, de Walter Mosley

Be careful what access you allow. Where I used to work, they had a
script that would delete a user and its home directory. Well, someone
had added a user with / as the home directory. When someone tried to
remove that user... Well... Bye-bye operating system.

TB wrote:
> I had a thread going titled ID Creation" back on 5/31/05, but Google
> keeps erroring out when I try to add to it so I'm having to start
> another one. It is a new question anyway.
>
> I have added users to the security group that I want to be able to
> create user IDs. My new question is on deleting users. The users in
> the security group can remove the users either through smit or with
> rmuser -p <userID>, my problem is that I also need the users' home
> directories removed. How can I get them removed without giving out
> root access?
>
> Thanks.

TB wrote:
> I had a thread going titled ID Creation" back on 5/31/05, but Google
> keeps erroring out when I try to add to it so I'm having to start
> another one. It is a new question anyway.
>
> I have added users to the security group that I want to be able to
> create user IDs. My new question is on deleting users. The users in
> the security group can remove the users either through smit or with
> rmuser -p <userID>, my problem is that I also need the users' home
> directories removed. How can I get them removed without giving out
> root access?

Another solution besides the ones already suggested would be
to set up a simple cronjob which searches $HOME for files/dirs
with "nouser" or "nogroup" (find $HOME -nouser -o -nogroup
-exec ...) every night and performs an action e.g. delete,
report, archive to backup system then delete, etc. on them.
Admittidly this adds a delay to the whole process of deleting
all user data, but i'd consider it much safer than fiddling
with sudo. Plus you can restrict the find to the $HOME and
thus avoide situations like aix@mail.com described.
On the downside you have to make sure there are no legimate
unowned files/dirs under $HOME. Untarred downloads are always
a popular source for files/dirs of this kind. On the other
hand this will educate your users and thus contirbute to your
BOFH status ;-)

Regards,

Frank