Technical Tip: How to remove users from the command line

Those steps can be followed when the user cannot be removed from the GUI. A bulk removal from the GUI can take some time till ending in a timeout, and some actions can remain pending.

1. Catch the ID of the user: From the super CLI as root, search based on the username and replace name_of_the_user_to_delete:

user_id=`psql -U phoenix phoenixdb -At -c "select id from ph_user where name = 'name_of_the_user_to_delete'" | head -n1`

2. Check the user ID:

echo $user_id

Make sure a numeric value is displayed; otherwise, renew the first step.

3. Remove the dependencies and the user:

psql -U phoenix phoenixdb -c "delete from ph_contact where id in (select contact_id from ph_user2contact where user_id = ${user_id});"
psql -U phoenix phoenixdb -c "delete from ph_user2contact where user_id = ${user_id};"
psql -U phoenix phoenixdb -c "delete from ph_user_domain_mapping where user_id = ${user_id};"
psql -U phoenix phoenixdb -c "delete from ph_user where id = ${user_id};"

The user is now removed, and will not be displayed anymore in the GUI CMDB after refreshing the page.