How to force logout a user in Linux

Forcibly logging out a user on Linux maintains control over shared systems when sessions hang, permissions change, or access must be revoked immediately. Removing only the problematic login preserves availability for other users and avoids the disruption of stopping services or rebooting.

Utilities such as who, ps, and pkill correlate login names with active sessions and the processes backing them. Locating the interactive shell or session leader by process ID makes it possible to terminate a single login cleanly instead of disconnecting networking or restarting the host.

Forcible termination discards unsaved work and can interrupt database clients, editors, or file transfers mid-operation, so it suits only cases where a normal logout is impossible or unsafe. Commands that target all processes for an account affect every terminal and background job owned by that user, which is especially sensitive for shared accounts and production services on multi-user servers.

1. Open a terminal on the Linux system with sudo-capable credentials.

   $ whoami
   admin

2. List currently logged-in users to identify the account and session to remove.

   $ who
   user     :0           2025-02-01 09:23 (:0)
   shakir   pts/1        2025-02-01 09:31 (192.168.111.1)

   The second column, such as pts/1, indicates the terminal attached to the login session.

3. Record the target username and its terminal identifier for later reference.

   Matching the username and pts value helps distinguish multiple logins for the same account.

4. List processes owned by the target account to locate the interactive shell or session leader.

   $ ps -u shakir
     PID TTY          TIME CMD
    2086 ?        00:00:00 systemd
    2087 ?        00:00:00 (sd-pam)
    2248 ?        00:00:00 sshd
    2249 pts/1    00:00:00 bash
   ##### snipped #####

   Related: How to list processes by user and group in Linux

5. Terminate the shell process for the chosen session to close that specific login.

   $ sudo kill 2249
   [sudo] password for admin:

   bash is the interactive shell in this example; stopping it cleanly ends the user’s terminal session.

6. Optionally end all processes for the account when every session for that user must be disconnected.

   $ sudo pkill -u shakir

   Stopping all processes for an account also terminates background jobs and service-like tasks owned by that user, which can interrupt running workloads.

7. Forcefully kill any remaining processes for the account that ignore normal termination signals.

   $ sudo pkill -9 -u shakir

   Using SIGKILL bypasses cleanup and can leave temporary files or partially written data on disk.

8. Verify that the account is no longer listed as logged in.

   $ who
   user     :0           2025-02-01 09:23 (:0)

   Absence of the username in the who output confirms that all interactive sessions for that account have been closed.