hey all;

I'm trying to delete a user from /etc/passwd.My little script should perfom the following
*Display a list of usernames as listed in /etc/passwd who's user ID is 500 or greater.

*Prompt for which user to remove

*Remove the account and lock up the home directory

awk '$3 => 500 {print $1} /etc/passwd
echo "Enter here the user name that you want to delete please:" deluser
var3='grep "$deluser" | cut -d":" -f3 /etc/passwd'
read -n deluser
userdel $deluser

but I don't know how to lock up the home directory

The operator for 'greater or equal' in awk is '>=' not '<='.
The /etc/passwd file is ':' delimited, so you must specify this delimiter when you access it with awk :

awk -F: '$2 >= 500 { print $1 }' /etc/passwd

If a command that list users exists on you system (for example 'lsuser' on AIX), use it instead of reading the passwd file.


Your var3 assignment will not work.
You must use backward quote '`' or '$( )' construct.
Your grep command haven't input file specified, so stdin will be used.

var3=$(grep "^$deluser:" /etc/passwd | grep -d: -f3)
var3=$(awk -F: '$1 == User {print $3}' User="=deluser" /etc/passwd)


A solution for locking the home directory is to change its owner to root, and set acces to 400.
You can also rename the home directory.

thanks for the answer.It worked