On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 5:48 AM, john ingrim <dmparis67 at gmail.com> wrote:
> And as I feared, it went pear-shaped.
>
> I gave the second user root privileges, and the logged in as that user. ?I 
> deleted the first user, but noticed that his $HOME had not been removed.
>
> I activated root as a 'normal' user, logged in as root and then tried

the home directory of the "normal" user is not /export/home/john?

>
> # rm -rf /export/home/john
>
> I got 'device busy'. ?Huh ???

if your "normal" user 'cd /export/home/john', then su'd and did the rm
-rf, it wouldn't
work because you're in the directory.

> I went down to init -1 and tried again on the console. ?Same story.

> I now have a virtually unusable laptop sitting here, and if I have to 
> reinstall, it's gonna *really* piss me off, as I don't have an external CD 
> drive, and last time, the colleague who lent me his took ten days to 
> 'remember' to bring it in, and I had to install OpenSolaris during my lunch 
> break.

you can't use the "normal" user for the time being until you have a
better understanding
of how to manage users and disk space?

> Could someone *please* tell me how to get rid of *ALL* users except root, and 
> to have *NOTHING* in /export/home, so that I can create a user and start 
> again?

well, I would be surprised if you couldnt, as root, move
/export/home/john to /export/home/xjohn and
then create your john user id with new directory.  Why you have to
have nothing in /export/home
is a bit ridiculous because it's clear you're not very comfortable
managing a *nix system.
Move the dir, create your user, go forward. When you get more
experience, then clean it up.

>
> Or do I have to reinstall?

you should not have to reinstall

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