How to Add or Remove Linux User From Group

Linux is by default a multi-user system (meaning many users can connect to it simultaneously and work), thus Linux user management is one of the fundamental tasks of a system administrator, which includes everything from creating, updating, and deleting user accounts or user groups on a Linux system.

In this short quick article, you will learn how to add or remove a user from a group in a Linux system.

Check a User Group in Linux

To find out what group a user is in, just run the following groups command and provide the username (tecmint in this example) as an argument.

# groups tecmint

tecmint : tecmint wheel

To find out the group of root user in Linux, just run the groups command without any argument.

# group

root
Check a User Group in Linux
Check a User Group in Linux

Add a User to a Group in Linux

Before trying to add a user to a group, ensure that the user exists on the system. To add a user to a certain group, use the usermod command with the -a flag which tells the usermod to add a user to the supplementary group(s), and the -G option specifies the actual groups in the following format.

In this example, tecmint is the username and postgres is the group name:

# usermod -aG postgres tecmint
# groups tecmint
Add User to Group in Linux
Add User to Group in Linux

Remove a User from a Group in Linux

To remove a user from a group, use the gpasswd command with the -d option as follows.

# gpasswd -d tecmint postgres
# groups tecmint
Remove User from Group in Linux
Remove User from Group in Linux

Additionally, on Ubuntu and its derivatives, you can remove a user from a specific group using the deluser command as follows (where tecmint is the username and postgres is the group name).

$ sudo deluser tecmint postgres

For more information, see the man pages for each of the different commands we have used in this article.

$ man groups
$ man usermod
$ man gpasswd
$ man deluser

You will also find the following user management guides very useful:

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Aaron Kili
Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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