Raspberry Pi OS • Re: unable to delete old user

Make sure david-pi has sudo rights. This is vital as A. you won't be able to delete david without them and B. if you do manage to delete david you'll have a lot of trouble doing anything that needs root level access without this permission.

Assuming that david-pi does have sudo rights ...

1. Login as david-pi
2. Open a terminal

3. Code:

   sudo raspi-config

4. System Options -> Boot ->Desktop Desktop GUI
5. System Options -> Auto Login -> Yes
6. Reboot
   You should now be auto logged in to the desktop as david-pi
7. Open a terminal

8. Code:

   sudo deluser david

   if you want to keep their home directory.

   Code:

   sudo deluser --remove-home david

   if you don't
9. You may also wish to run

   Code:

   sudo delgroup david

Once you've removed the user you may see files with a numeric owner and/or group (probably 1000). This is normal and to be expected.

For more on deluser and delgroup see their man pages.

Written against Version: 20250707 of raspi-config.

Statistics: Posted by thagrol — Fri Aug 22, 2025 2:17 pm

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