groupdel

Groupdel is a command used on Unix-like operating systems to remove a named group from the system. It is part of the standard set of user and group management tools and is typically executed by a system administrator or with elevated privileges.

How groupdel works: The command updates the system’s group databases, commonly /etc/group and, where present, /etc/gshadow. It removes the group’s entry and disassociates the group from any users’ supplementary memberships. The operation does not delete user accounts themselves, but it does remove the group from users’ listed groups.

Usage and constraints: The command requires root privileges. The basic syntax is groupdel GROUP. On many systems, groupdel will refuse to delete a group that is the primary group for one or more users; in such cases you must first assign those users to another primary group (for example with usermod -g NEWGROUP USER) or edit /etc/passwd directly, and then run groupdel again. If the named group does not exist, behavior can vary by implementation (some report an error, others may suppress the error or accept a force option on some platforms).

Considerations: Deleting a group frees its GID for reuse and removes the group from /etc/group and /etc/gshadow. It is a safe operation for removing unused or obsolete groups, but administrators should verify that no essential roles depend on the group and that user accounts will not be left with an invalid primary group.

Example: groupdel engineers