removing user from IAM but keeping their home folder on compute engine vm instances

[Reto Steffen]

Hi,

I need to remove a user and his permission from google cloud platform admin panel and from logging-in a compute engine. But I would still like to keep the files that are in their home folder on the vm instances.

If I understood correctly from this thread https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gce-discussion/remove$20user|sort:relevance/gce-discussion/W1f7MVOeK_g/i6aPeOYfAwAJ I can just remove them from IAM which will prevent them from logging in and their home folder shouldn't be deleted.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Best,

Reto 

[Faizan (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Reto,

Removing the user from your project will block the access to the resources in the project. You still need to delete user's ssh keys or block ssh access to the VM. This can be done by removing user's ssh key from project metadata or instance itself. If you remove the user from project metadata, user's files are directories will be kept on current VMs and user will not be provisioned on new VMs. Another way to block access without deleting the ssh keys is by using OpenSSH directives.

I hope that helps.

Faizan