can't remove users from group
Asked by Ruud Grosmann:

the group 'confluence-administrators' is populated with people that shouldn't be there. For example because they have left the company. When I try to remove them from the group using the button at the end of the line, I get a message like

```
The following error(s) occurred:Could not remove user 'rvdlst' as a member of group 'confluence-administrators'. Check your server logs for more information.
```

```
However, in the server log catalina.out nothing is added.
```

* is this the right place to look for logging?
* what can I do to withdraw admin-rights from a user?


Answers:
author: Ruud Grosmann
body: Hi Alex,

we are not using LDAP, but jira for the administration. I simply had to remove the person using the jira administration interface. Works without problems. Problem solved. Thanks for your help. Meanwhile I am wondering if confluence is able to recognize this construction and provide the administrator with a more meaningful error message...

Ruud


author: Alex Perez
body: Hi Ruud,

First remove the user from the confluence-**users** group. This way,despite the user still has admin rights, he wouldn't login so the admin rights will be useless.

Then, go to Logging \& Profiling in the admin of confluence and increase the verbosity to DEBUG, depending on conf version, there is a Production/Diagnostic switch. Turn it to diagnostic, repeat steps and look for some messages in logs

comments: author: Ruud Grosmann
body: [confluence-administrators](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/admin/users/domembersofgroupsearch.action?membersOfGroupTerm=confluence-administrators)   
![](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/images/icons/bullet_blue.gif) [confluence-users](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/admin/users/domembersofgroupsearch.action?membersOfGroupTerm=confluence-users)   
![](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/images/icons/bullet_blue.gif) [jira-administrators](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/admin/users/domembersofgroupsearch.action?membersOfGroupTerm=jira-administrators)   
![](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/images/icons/bullet_blue.gif) [jira-users](http://confluence.sdu.nl/confluence/admin/users/domembersofgroupsearch.action?membersOfGroupTerm=jira-users)


author: Ruud Grosmann
body: Hi Alex,

thanks for your suggestion. The logging contains useful information by now. Hopefully this brings me further. I think the issue is the following:

```
..... many more lines.....        at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:489)        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636)Caused by: com.atlassian.crowd.exception.OperationNotPermittedException: com.atlassian.crowd.exception.ApplicationPermissionException: Application "crowd-embedded" does not allow group modifications        at com.atlassian.crowd.embedded.core.CrowdServiceImpl.removeUserFromGroup(CrowdServiceImpl.java:743)
```

Looks I have not enough rights. Can someone tell me what I need to do do to be able to remove users from groups?

thanks in advance, Ruud


author: Ruud Grosmann
body: by now, I am member of


author: Ruud Grosmann
body: by now, I am member of confluence-administrators and confluence-users, jira-administrators and jira-users


author: Alex Perez
body: I think that isn't related to confluence-users / jira-users membership, as it seems you are using crowd to manage users/membership/sso ..etc.

Try to do the operation of removing membership in crowd, not in confluence.

Unfortunatelly I can't bring you more help as I have no experience with crowd \^\^

HTH


author: Ruud Grosmann
body: Hi Alex,

no I *am* using confluence. Maybe confluence uses a crowd library. But I got this message when walking the path

dashboard\>administration\>manage groups\>confluence administrators and then pushing a remove rights button at the right of a user line.

So it is a confluence issue...


author: Alex Perez
body: Maybe are you using LDAP (User Directories) in confluence, so you are managing group membership in the LDAP server?

In that case, you need to remove the user membership in your LDAP.


author: Ruud Grosmann
body: Hi Alex,

we are not using LDAP, but jira for the administration. I simply had to remove the person using the jira administration interface. Works without problems. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

<br />

Ruud


Tags: confluence-administration