Deleting user groups

When you have a user group that you no longer need, you might want to delete that user group. There are several ways to do that in Linux. Here, I will show you two of them, which are almost similar: using groupdel and delgroup commands

Delete an user group using the groupdel command

1. To delete a group, execute:

   $ sudo groupdel groupToDelete

2. You can remove the primary group of a user by passing the -f option to the groupdel command. For example, you can remove the admins group:

   $ sudo groupdel -f admins

3. Check that the group has been removed:

   $ grep '^groupToDelete' /etc/group

Delete an user group using the delgroup command

1. To delete a group, execute:

   $ sudo delgroup groupToDelete

2. Check that the group has been removed:

   $ grep '^groupToDelete' /etc/group

3. Another option is to delete an user group only if it is a system user group. This will help you to avoid accidentally deleting non-system user groups. To do that, you must use the --system option:

   $ sudo delgroup --system --group groupToDelete

4. If you want to backup the files before removing an user group, use the --backup option:

   $ sudo delgroup --backup --group groupToDelete

Remove an user from a group

Use the following command to remove an user from a group:

$ sudo deluser userToRemove groupName