Cannot Delete User

Question

I am trying to uninstall logstash, but sudo apt-get remove logstash fails because the user is being used by a process. If I try to manually delete the logstash user, I cannot because even when I kill the process, a new one immediately pops up. For example, if I check for processes using logstash:

ps -fp $(pgrep -u logstash)

I get

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
logstash 17376     1 99 10:04 ?        00:00:10 /usr/bin/java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/

Then I try to kill the process and delete the user:

sudo killall -KILL -u logstash
sudo userdel logstash

But now logstash is already being used by another process:

userdel: user logstash is currently used by process 17794

How can I delete the logstash user?

Solution 1

First simply remove entire dir /opt/logstash sudo rm -rf /opt/logstash/ and then try to remove logstash with sudo apt-get remove logstash

Solution 2

Try the following :

in terminal type : w

then see after the username an output like this : pts/2

now type :

fuser -k /dev/pts/2

This should kick the user, now try to delete it

Comments

[Binyomin Trager]

Thank you for your response. I only see my username with a pts/1 after it, and my username again with tty7 after it. When I do fuser -k /dev/pts/1 it just closes my terminal, but the logstash user is still being used.

[nux]

are you logging in with same user you want to delete ?

[Binyomin Trager]

I don't think so... I am logged in as myself btrager and I am trying to delete logstash.

[nux]

reboot your pc then try again

[Binyomin Trager]

When I try lsof | grep logstash, and kill the process, I have the same problem that a new one starts immediately after I kill it.

[Binyomin Trager]

That one finally worked. Thanks! If you could give a little more explanation I would appreciate it, and others might benefit from it as well.