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Thank you both!<br />
<br />
Sadly I'm not getting alerts from Experts Exchange, so I didn't see these until now. <br />
<br />
I've copied the passwd to a backup, just in case, then deleted all the users but one. That one I'll probably change to a new user number.
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Thank you both!

Sadly I'm not getting alerts from Experts Exchange, so I didn't see these until now.

I've copied the passwd to a backup, just in case, then deleted all the users but one. That one I'll probably change to a new user number.

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We are running a RHEL 6 server, and for reasons I won't delve into at the moment a few additional accounts were created with UID 0 giving them root access.<br />
<br />
I want to get rid of them, but trying to delete the user by username doesn't work as the OS goes by UID and says they are logged in. If I try to log them out all processes owned by root are killed off (ya, learned that the hard way).<br />
<br />
I theorize that using usermod might let me change the UID - but I don't know if that will also affect the root account.<br />
<br />
Should I just create a dummy account, then edit /etc/passwd to set the UID and group for each account to the UID / group of the dummy account, then remove them all?<br />
<br />
What do you suggest that will not result in locking up the server?<br />
<br />
Thanks!
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We are running a RHEL 6 server, and for reasons I won't delve into at the moment a few additional accounts were created with UID 0 giving them root access.

I want to get rid of them, but trying to delete the user by username doesn't work as the OS goes by UID and says they are logged in. If I try to log them out all processes owned by root are killed off (ya, learned that the hard way).

I theorize that using usermod might let me change the UID - but I don't know if that will also affect the root account.

Should I just create a dummy account, then edit /etc/passwd to set the UID and group for each account to the UID / group of the dummy account, then remove them all?

What do you suggest that will not result in locking up the server?

Thanks!

Removing multiple accounts with UID 0

Linux is a UNIX-like open source operating system with hundreds of distinct distributions, including: Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, CentOS, and Arch Linux. Linux is generally associated with web and database servers, but has become popular in many niche industries and applications.

Linux

A server is a computer program or a machine that waits for requests from other machines or software (clients) and responds to them. This architecture is called the client–server model. The clients may run on the same computer or may connect to the server over a network. The purpose of a server is to share data or hardware and software resources among clients. Typical computing servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers.

Server Software

The Linux operating system, in all its flavors, has its own share of security flaws that allow intrusions, but there are various mechanisms by which these flaws can be removed, generally divided into two parts: authentication and access control. Authentication is responsible for ensuring that a user requesting access to the system is really the user with the account, while access control is responsible for controlling which resources each account has access to and what kind of access is permitted.