Arch Linux

Carlwill

Member

From: Orlando, FL

Registered: 2008-10-06

Posts: 560

Website

Orphaned Home Directories

I realized my script for deleting users was not working properly. For some reason it did delete the user account from the system but did not use the 'userdel -r' command. I think I may have left some home directories in the system that are from old deleted accounts. Is there a command or way I can see what directories under /home are not tied to accounts that are in /etc/passwd?

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grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: Orphaned Home Directories

If the list isn't too large:

$ sed 's/\:.*$//' /etc/passwd |sort >  a1
$ ls /home/ |sort >  a2
$ diff a1 a2

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Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

panuh

Member

From: X :ɯoɹℲ

Registered: 2009-11-24

Posts: 144

Re: Orphaned Home Directories

for file in /home/*
do echo $file: $(cat /etc/passwd|grep $file|wc -l)
done

I know this is a really ugly script but that's because I'm all at the beginning. But I wished to once post a script in the forum so hard

I don't know how full your /home/ is and how long this will take. But anyway... Maybe it could actually help XD

btw. it will pass a list of all folders. a zero next to abandoned folders.

EDIT: Okay... grey wins in every sense but it was a start.

Last edited by panuh (2010-02-02 16:01:21)

raf_kig

Member

Registered: 2008-11-28

Posts: 143

Re: Orphaned Home Directories

find owns you :-)

find /home -maxdepth 1 -nouser

Regards,

raf