If a user leaves or moves to a different part of the company, you should remove or modify their ability to access your GitHub Enterprise instance.

If employees leave the company, you can suspend their GitHub Enterprise accounts to open up seats in your site license while preserving the issues, comments, repositories, gists, and other data they created. Suspended users cannot sign into your instance, nor can they push or pull code.

When you suspend a user, the change takes effect immediately with no notification to the user. If the user attempts to pull or push to a repository, they'll receive this error:

git clone git@[hostname]:john-doe/test-repo.git
Cloning into 'test-repo'...
ERROR: Your account is suspended. Please check with your installation administrator.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Note: If LDAP Sync is enabled for your GitHub Enterprise instance, users are automatically suspended when they're removed from the LDAP directory server. When LDAP Sync is enabled for your instance, normal user suspension methods are disabled.

Suspending a user from the user admin dashboard

  1. Rocketship icon for accessing site admin settings
    In the upper-right corner of any page, click .

  2. Site admin settings search field
    In the search field, type the name of the user and click Search.

  3. Site admin settings search options
    In the search results, click the name of the user.

  4. Admin Tools
    In the upper-right corner of the page, click Admin.

  5. Admin Tools
    In the left sidebar, click Admin.

  6. Suspend button
    Under "Account suspension," in the red Danger Zone box, click Suspend.

  7. Suspend reason
    Provide a reason to suspend the user.

Unsuspending a user from the user admin dashboard

As when suspending a user, unsuspending a user takes effect immediately. The user will not be notified.

  1. Rocketship icon for accessing site admin settings
    In the upper-right corner of any page, click .

  2. Suspended users tab
    In the left sidebar, click Suspended users.

  3. Suspended user
    Click the name of the user account that you would like to unsuspend.

  4. Admin Tools
    In the upper-right corner of the page, click Admin.

  5. Admin Tools
    In the left sidebar, click Admin.

  6. Unsuspend button
    Under "Account suspension," in the red Danger Zone box, click Unsuspend.

  7. Unsuspend reason
    Provide a reason to unsuspend the user.

Suspending a user from the command line

  1. SSH into your GitHub Enterprise instance.

    ssh -p 122 admin@HOSTNAME

  2. Run ghe-user-suspend with the username to suspend.

    ghe-user-suspend username

Creating a custom message for suspended users

You can create a custom message that suspended users will see when attempting to sign in.

  1. Rocketship icon for accessing site admin settings
    In the upper-right corner of any page, click .

  2. Admin Center tab
    In the left sidebar, click Admin center.

  3. Messages
    In the left sidebar, click Messages.

  4. Add message
    Click Add message.

  5. Suspended user message
    Type your message into the Suspended user message box. You can type Markdown, or use the Markdown toolbar to style your message.
  6. Preview button
    Click the Preview button under the Suspended user message field to see the rendered message.
  7. Suspended user message rendered
    Review the rendered message.
  8. Save changes
    At the bottom of the page, click Save changes.

Unsuspending a user from the command line

  1. SSH into your GitHub Enterprise instance.

    ssh -p 122 admin@HOSTNAME

  2. Run ghe-user-unsuspend with the username to unsuspend.

    ghe-user-unsuspend username