rmuser seems to "hang" indefinitely for some users

Kiki Novak

Kiki Novak

Hi,

I have FreeBSD 10.0 amd64 running on one of my machines, and I'm currently reading through the (excellent) FreeBSD handbook and experimenting a lot.
It looks like the rmuser command does not work as expected. I created a bunch of users, and when I try to delete them, the rmuser command seems to "hang" indefinitely for some of them, and I have to hit Ctrl-C to get back to the command prompt... without knowing if the operation was a success or a failure. Here's what this looks like:

Rich (BB code): 
root@bernadette:~ #  cat /etc/passwd
...
nobody:*:65534:65534:Unprivileged user:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
kikinovak:*:1001:1001:Nicolas Kovacs:/home/kikinovak:/bin/sh
glagaffe:*:1002:1003:Gaston Lagaffe:/home/glagaffe:/bin/sh
ahabian:*:1003:1004:Alexandre Habian:/home/ahabian:/bin/sh
kjoly:*:1004:1005:Karine Joly:/home/kjoly:/bin/sh
jktartempion:*:1005:1006:Jean-Kevin Tartempion:/home/jktartempion:/bin/sh
root@bernadette:~ #  rmuser jktartempion
Matching password entry:

jktartempion:*:1005:1006::0:0:Jean-Kevin Tartempion:/home/jktartempion:/bin/sh

Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user's home directory (/home/jktartempion)? y
Removing user (jktartempion): mailspool home passwd.
root@bernadette:~ # rmuser kjoly
Matching password entry:

kjoly:*:1004:1005::0:0:Karine Joly:/home/kjoly:/bin/sh

Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user's home directory (/home/kjoly)? y
Removing user (kjoly): mailspool home passwd.
root@bernadette:~ #  rmuser ahabian
Matching password entry:

ahabian:*:1003:1004::0:0:Alexandre Habian:/home/ahabian:/bin/sh

Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user's home directory (/home/ahabian)? y
Removing user (ahabian): mailspool home passwd
^C
root@bernadette:~ #  rmuser glagaffe
Matching password entry:

glagaffe:*:1002:1003::0:0:Gaston Lagaffe:/home/glagaffe:/bin/sh

Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user's home directory (/home/glagaffe)? y
Removing user (glagaffe): mailspool home passwd^C
root@bernadette:~ #

Any idea what's wrong here?
 
That's strange, because I created these users just to experiment, but they never logged in - or I never su'ed to any of their accounts.
 
I was just guessing, probably incorrectly.

An old BSD trick is to press ctrl-T while waiting for a process. It will often show the status of the current program. Sometimes it is not very helpful, but sometimes it can show what is taking so long.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top