RHEL 7.5 - How to remove user from a group?

Question

usermod does not have an option to remove user from a group

Usage: usermod [options] LOGIN
Options:
  -c, --comment COMMENT         new value of the GECOS field
  -d, --home HOME_DIR           new home directory for the user account
  -e, --expiredate EXPIRE_DATE  set account expiration date to EXPIRE_DATE
  -f, --inactive INACTIVE       set password inactive after expiration
                                to INACTIVE
  -g, --gid GROUP               force use GROUP as new primary group
  -G, --groups GROUPS           new list of supplementary GROUPS
  -a, --append                  append the user to the supplemental GROUPS
                                mentioned by the -G option without removing
                                him/her from other groups
  -h, --help                    display this help message and exit
  -l, --login NEW_LOGIN         new value of the login name
  -L, --lock                    lock the user account
  -m, --move-home               move contents of the home directory to the
                                new location (use only with -d)
  -o, --non-unique              allow using duplicate (non-unique) UID
  -p, --password PASSWORD       use encrypted password for the new password
  -R, --root CHROOT_DIR         directory to chroot into
  -s, --shell SHELL             new login shell for the user account
  -u, --uid UID                 new UID for the user account
  -U, --unlock                  unlock the user account
  -Z, --selinux-user SEUSER     new SELinux user mapping for the user account

Which command & options are used to remove a user from a group?

Possible duplicate https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/29570/how-do-i-remove-a-user-from-a-group — Panther, Oct 29 '18 at 14:57
@Panther Reviewed and used all the options used in that query. no luck — overexchange, Oct 29 '18 at 15:00
@Panther Which option from that query has to be used for removing the user from group? there are multiple different answers there. — overexchange, Oct 29 '18 at 15:07
@Panther I tried usermod -G wheel appuser, it did not remove appuser from wheel — overexchange, Oct 29 '18 at 15:13
@Panther Read this... https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/29570/how-do-i-remove-a-user-from-a-group#comment472498_29570 Those answers are not for RHEL — overexchange, Oct 29 '18 at 15:16

Stephen Kitt · Answer 1 · 2018-10-29T15:56:56.397

14

The appropriate option is -G, but you don’t specify groups you want to remove, you specify groups you want to keep. If user is a member of group1 and group2, you can remove group2 by running

usermod -G group1 user

This will update user so that the only supplementary group membership is group1.

As mentioned in How do I remove a user from a group?, you can also use gpasswd:

gpasswd -d user group2

will remove user from group2.

edited Oct 29 '18 at 15:56

answered Oct 29 '18 at 15:19

Stephen Kitt

434,908

and if a user is a member of 3 groups and you want to remove only 1 with usermod then the list of groups is coma-separated: usermod -G group1,group2 user – xealits Jul 05 '23 at 14:50

RHEL 7.5 - How to remove user from a group?

1 Answers1