How do I hide a particular user from the LightDM login screen?

Question

How do I hide a particular user from the login screen on a default install of 11.10 and higher? (ie. using LightDM)?

Answer 1

Currently this method is not working because of a bug in lightdm.

Please check the bug status before applying this method.

---

Heres what you want to do:

First, make a backup of your config.

sudo cp /etc/lightdm/users.conf /etc/lightdm/users.conf.bak

Then, you need to edit your config:

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/users.conf

You'll see something like this:

#
# User accounts configuration
#
# NOTE: If you have AccountsService installed on your system, then LightDM will
# use this instead and these settings will be ignored
#
# minimum-uid = Minimum UID required to be shown in greeter
# hidden-users = Users that are not shown to the user
# hidden-shells = Shells that indicate a user cannot login
#
[UserAccounts]
minimum-uid=500
hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess
hidden-shells=/bin/false /usr/sbin/nologin

Of interest to us is the part here:

hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess

To hide the username james, just add it like this:

hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess james

Then, reboot your computer and it should be gone.

As a reference to others, see

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/accountsservice/+bug/857651

Answer 2

Your option until bug 857651 is fixed is to create the user with uid < 1000

For example, to assign new uid less than 1000, (we are using 999) use this command

sudo usermod -u 999 user-name

Replace the user-name with the actual user name, just as anwar or detly etc.

Answer 3

because the Ubuntu 12.04 setup

[UserAccounts]  
minimum-uid=500

so we need to reduce the uid less than 500

example: sudo usermod -u 499 user-name

It works with me! SOLVED Good luck.