USS_DELETE(8)

📦 version 1.8.16.1, in nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

👑 uss_delete — the AFS Command Reference, section 8, bestie

okay so before we even get into it: this page lives in the AFS Command Reference, section 8, and it's the uss_delete page — yes, the "delete a whole user account" one. sit down, hydrate, and let's go 🍓

✨ NAME ✨

uss_delete — Deletes a user account (deprecated)

deprecated, babes. keep that in your back pocket, we'll get to why 😭

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

like, the shape of the thing, verbatim:

uss delete -user <login name>
    [-mountpoint <mountpoint for user's volume>]
    [-savevolume] [-verbose] [-cell <cell name>]
    [-admin <administrator to authenticate>] [-dryrun]
    [-skipauth] [-help]

and the short-short version, same energy, fewer letters:

uss d -u <login name> [-m <mountpoint for user's volume>]
    [-sa] [-v] [-c <cell name>]
    [-a <administrator to authenticate>] [-d] [-sk] [-h]

💀 CAUTIONS 💀

okay real talk, this is the part where I hold your hand 🫶 — the uss command suite is currently designed for cells running the obsolete Authentication Server, which basically means it's genuinely useful for sites that haven't migrated to a Kerberos version 5 KDC yet. and like... the Authentication Server and all its little supporting commands are getting removed in a future version of OpenAFS, and that could absolutely include uss — unless someone who actually finds it useful converts it to work with a Kerberos version 5 KDC. so. yeah. the clock is clocking 🕰️😭

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so uss delete removes the Authentication Database and Protection Database entries for whoever you named in the -user argument. that's the baseline. and then — depending on whether you pass -mountpoint and -savevolume — it can also remove the user's home volume and its associated VLDB entry, the mount point for the volume, or both. choose your own adventure, but make it irreversible 💅

  • both the volume AND the mount point? use the -mountpoint argument to name the user's home directory. and ngl, it is best to create a tape backup of a volume before deleting it. also heads up: other mount points for the volume are not removed, if they exist 🙈
  • mount point only? provide both -mountpoint and -savevolume.
  • preserve both the volume and the mount point? just omit the -mountpoint argument (or both it and the -savevolume flag). iconic minimalism ✨

💖 OPTIONS 💖

one bullet per flag, every single one, no skips, no cap:

  • -user <login name> — Names the entry to delete from the Protection and Authentication Databases.
  • -mountpoint <mountpoint for the user's volume> — Specifies the pathname to the user's home directory, which is deleted from the filespace. By default, the volume referenced by the mount point is also removed from the file server machine that houses it, along with its Volume Location Database (VLDB) entry. To retain the volume and VLDB entry, include the -savevolume flag. Partial pathnames are interpreted relative to the current working directory.
also please, PLEASE specify the read/write path to the mount point — otherwise you get that failure from trying to remove a mount point out of a read-only volume and you'll be sad 😭. by convention the read/write path is marked by putting a period before the cell name at the pathname's second level (for example, /afs/.example.com ). for the whole read/write vs read-only paths through the filespace concept, go read the fs mkmount reference page 🫶
  • -savevolume — Preserves the user's volume and VLDB entry. (the "don't nuke my data" flag, we stan)
  • -verbose — Produces on the standard output stream a detailed trace of the command's execution. If this argument is omitted, only warnings and error messages appear.
  • -cell <cell name> — Specifies the cell in which to run the command. For more details, see uss(8).
  • -admin <administrator to authenticate> — Specifies the AFS user name under which to establish authenticated connections to the AFS server processes that maintain the various components of a user account. For more details, see uss(8).
  • -dryrun — Reports actions that the command interpreter needs to perform while executing the command, without actually performing them. For more details, see uss(8).
  • -skipauth — Prevents authentication with the AFS Authentication Server, allowing a site using Kerberos to substitute that form of authentication.
  • -help — Prints the online help for this command. All other valid options are ignored. (it said what it said 💅)

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

this one removes smith's user account from the "example.com" cell, and the -savevolume argument keeps the "user.smith" volume sitting pretty on its file server machine:

% uss delete smith -mountpoint /afs/example.com/usr/smith -savevolume

main character deletion energy, honestly 👑

🔥 PRIVILEGE REQUIRED 🔥

you can't just do this, bestie. the issuer (or the user named by the -admin argument) must:

  1. belong to the system:administrators group in the Protection Database,
  2. have the "ADMIN" flag turned on in his or her Authentication Database entry, and
  3. have at least "a" (administer) and "d" (delete) permissions on the access control list (ACL) of the mount point's parent directory.

aaand if the -savevolume flag is not included, the issuer must also be listed in the /etc/openafs/server/UserList file. yeah. you need the whole checklist. no shortcuts 🙈

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

UserList(5), fs_mkmount(1), uss(8) — go read them, they're right there 🎀

IBM Corporation 2000. <http://www.ibm.com/> All Rights Reserved.

This documentation is covered by the IBM Public License Version 1.0. It was converted from HTML to POD by software written by Chas Williams and Russ Allbery, based on work by Alf Wachsmann and Elizabeth Cassell.

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was OpenAFS, dated 2026-06-25 — uss_delete(8), out. slay, stay deprecated-safe, and back up your volumes before you delete them, I'm literally begging 😭💖

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