Deleting User

[Quarkrad]

I need to delete a user on my pc but have forgotten the password - have googled and written down procedure via rescue mode at startup, but for some reason rescue mode freezes; all I can do is launch to desktop. Is there another way to delete this user - dad2? There is nothing stored in the dad2 profile - I just would like this user to be removed from my pc (at the moment pc boots to dad2 so I have log-off and re log-on to the user I want: dad.

[bapoumba]

Removing a user and its files is not a problem. You need to change the auto-login into that user first. But if you have forgotten the password, it will need a little more work. Let me look and try or wait for someone who will know for sure. You do have admin rights to dad, correct ?

Edit : which ubuntu flavor and environment are you using ?

[Quarkrad]

Thanks - I'm using 13.04 and the Unity environment.

[bapoumba]

OK, from the dad account, have a look at the link below and please paste the output to cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
If the file looks similar to the one in the link below or to mine, you can proceed. Do not hesitate to post it here first, before going further. Of course, I do not have autologin, so I'm missing the last line :

bapoumba_lxde@SonyBlue:~$ cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[SeatDefaults]
user-session=ubuntu
greeter-session=unity-greeter

The process will be :
If the last line says autologin-user=dad2, first backup the file :

sudo cp /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf /etc/lightdm/lightdm_old.conf

Remove dad2 from the line :

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Save and exit :
ctrl o (letter o) to save
ctrl x to exit.
Logout, and see if you can choose the user dad from the login screen.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/10642...utomatic-login

Then from the user dad, you can remove dad2 : https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/server...anagement.html

[Quarkrad]

Sorry - I'm going to have to pick this up tomorrow, but I appreciate your help so far. I have this output from my terminal:

dad@dadubuntu:~$ cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[SeatDefaults]
autologin-guest=false
autologin-user=dad2
autologin-user-timeout=0
autologin-session=lightdm-autologin
user-session=ubuntu
greeter-session=unity-greeter

I had the autologin-user=dad2 element so I carried on then got:

dad@dadubuntu:~$ sudo cp /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf /etc/lightdm/lightdm_old.conf
[sudo] password for dad:
dad is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

[bapoumba]

This is why I asked if you had admin rights with the dad account.

Is there another account with admin rights on this computer ?

I think that for now, you need to consider the autologin and removal of the dad2 account less of an issue than not having a user with admin rights. So leave the autologin for now, even if it is not going to be of much use if you do not remember the password.

There are ways to change the dad user privileges, but it is not that simple. I would like to make sure you are indeed the owner of both accounts. Please do not get upset, I have no way of knowing if your request is indeed legitimate. I'm not saying it is not, I'm just wondering and would not like to bump some other user outside of their account and give another one admin privileges.

How were the dad and dad2 accounts created ?

[Quarkrad]

I am a home user with a single PC - I have used Ubuntu since 8.04 and evolved to 13.04. I have always used dad as my user name (see my past history on this forum) and still regard myself as a newbie re Linux/Ubuntu admin. Despite my limited ability admin wise I have convinced about 12 family and friends to convert to Ubuntu - mainly because I use to look after their ******* machines and in the end got feed up keep having to do re-builds every few years. All these machines are basically used for email and surfing so 'looking after them' is within my limited capability. The cause of this present problem was again my ignorance with Ubuntu. I use a product called Teamviewer to remotely access these friends/family machines and last week had a problem with different versions (I have Teamviewer v7 and the machine I needed to access had v6). Because most of the remote machines have v7 I did not want to go down to v6 on my pc so my brain wave was to create another user on my machine (dad2) and install v6 on it. (The remote machine that has v6 on it is the only ******* machine left – I put Teamviewer on it a year or so ago). I created dad2 using the gui, System Settings/User Accounts and followed the prompts using my password to unlock where necessary. All went well (with respect to the issue on the remote pc) and then I found my machine boots to dad2. (I dual boot with ******* (iTunes only) and use grub/Burg). I (dad) have always been able to do things like gksudo nautilus or sudo su to get root access after entering my password but now I find dad is not in the sudoers file. This is very frustrating because I'm usually a bit overboard documenting passwords (i.e. the one for dad2) which I didn't this time and I now realise I could have installed Teamviewer V6 and V7 in my dad instance and chosen which one to use via the Dash.

[Quarkrad]

Hmm.... I've remebered the password I created for dad2 so I can now log-off either account and log-on to the other one. Problem is - whether I'm in dad or dad2 using their respective passwords I cannot sudo su or say, gksudo nautilus. A message comes up about not being in the sudoers file and contacting the system administrator - which is me, dad. Now I'm really stuck.

[steeldriver]

have a look here --> http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/fixsudo

[Quarkrad]

Thanks - but for some reason I cannot boot into recovery mode. It seems to get half way through and then the screen freezes. So I'm stuck within the Desktop environment or using LiveCD.