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Hawkeye
Asked: 2011-02-20 04:25:27 +0800 CST

Ubuntu - Identifying a logged in user's bash session

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I'm trying to delete a user logged into my ubuntu system. Let's call the user bob.

I'm running 

sudo userdel -r bob

The response I get is 

userdel: user bob is currently logged in

So I run

ps -u bob

To find his bash session to kill it. But I'm not seeing it - I'm looking for something like:

13205 pts/0    00:00:00 bash

(Which is my session) but I don't see another one:

What command can I run to find out what this user is logged in as?

Edit:

who bob

gives no result (to stdout at least)

last bob

gives a result three days ago - but running 

sudo userdel -r bob

Still gives the same result.

Edit

who

only gives my login.

Edit

root@machine:~# sudo userdel -rf bob
userdel: user bob is currently logged in
userdel: warning: can't remove /var/mail/bob: No such file or directory
userdel: error removing directory /
root@machine:~# sudo userdel -rf bob
userdel: user 'bob' does not exist

This seems like it was not a correct type of user - is that correct?

ubuntu login user-management ubuntu-10.04

5 Answers

  1. The who command should work.

    Or you could display all processes belong to bob with ps -au bob.

    • 1

  2. Run ps command:

    ps auxwwwf | less

    then press '/bob' and press enter(to search):

    ooshro    4465  0.0  0.6 223480 19348 ?        Rl   Feb18   1:19 gnome-terminal
ooshro    4466  0.0  0.0  14488   792 ?        S    Feb18   0:00  \_ gnome-pty-helper
ooshro    4467  0.0  0.1  22116  4884 pts/1    Ss   Feb18   0:00  \_ bash

root      1208  0.0  0.0  71268  2040 tty2     Ss   Feb18   0:00 /bin/login --       
ooshro   18088 10.5  0.1  22176  4932 tty2     S+   17:40   0:00  \_ -bash

root       579  0.0  0.5   5632  2192 ?        Ss   09:17   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd -D
root       706  0.0  0.7   8432  2784 ?        Ss   11:57   0:00  \_ sshd: ooshro [priv] 
ooshro     722  0.0  0.3   8564  1308 ?        S    11:57   0:02      \_ sshd: ooshro@pts/0  
ooshro     723  0.0  1.3   9808  5220 pts/0    Ss   11:57   0:00          \_ -bash
    • 1
  3. Best Answer

    Does sudo userdel -rf bob work? If not, what error does it give?

    • 1

  4. quick and dirty

    ps fuxaw |grep ^bob | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

    this will kill all bobs processes, so you can proceed with deleting the account.

    • 0

  5. track down the session off the user

    ps -u | grep bob

    and then kill them.

    Or, i you are feeling confident:

    kill -15 $(ps -U bob -o "pid=")

    Otherwise, you could try forcing the userdel by adding the -f option.

    • 0