How to change ubuntu username
How to change ubuntu username
How to Change Username in Ubuntu
This brief tutorial shows students and new users steps to change one’s username when using Ubuntu.
Unlike Windows, you can’t be logged in to Ubuntu while changing your username or account name. You must login as a different user with root permissions to able change an account name.
There are many tutorial that tell you to login as the root user, then change the username of the account you want to replace.
Although logging in as root to change an account username will work, this post will show you a different method that should also work without logging in as root.
If you’re a student or new user looking for a Linux system to start with, the easiest place to start is Ubuntu Linux OS. It’s a great Linux operating system for beginners and folks looking for easier Linux distribution to use.
Ubuntu is an open source Linux operating systems that runs on desktops, laptops, server and other devices.
To get started with changing your Ubuntu username, follow the steps below:
Restart in recovery mode
To change your username while not logged in, simply restart Ubuntu in recovery mode and go to the root prompt shell “Drop to root shell prompt“
To login to recovery mode, immediately after powering it on, quickly press either the Shift or Escape key.
At GRUB screen, choose “Advanced options for Ubuntu“
Then select Ubuntu recovery mode (usually the second line).
Next select root (Drop to root shell prompt)
In the root prompt, type these commands:
Change username
First remount the root:
To change the username and home folder name. Replace newname with the new username and oldname with the current username.
Display Name is the name that shows up on the logon screen.
Also, change group name. The newgroup should be the same as your username and oldgroup should be the same as your current username.
When you’re done, reboot.
That should do it. When you login back in, you’ll be prompted with the new username.
DO NOT DO THIS IF YOUR HOME DIRECTORY IS ENCRYPTED.
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to change your username when using Ubuntu. If you find any error above, please comment below.
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Published by Richard
In my spare time, I research topics that are interesting and worthwhile for users and students who want to try something new. I, too, am a student and my focus here is to help other students and new users get started with managing Ubuntu Linux, Windows, Content Management Systems (CMS) and others.
I try to do my best explaining the topics and detailing the instructions so that anyone can understand. These tutorials may not work in all situations and for all users. However, if you run into trouble, please ask your questions below and I or someone from the community may help you resolve. Thanks for reading and hope you come back.
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He, Peng
Robotic is the integration of all human knowledge, so far.
Change the Username and Hostname on Ubuntu
Abstract: If you didn’t give a perfect user name and host name(the computer name), you can change them later.
Change the username
Log in using the «root» account and the password you have previously set.
Change the username and the home folder to the new name that you want.
Change the group name to the new name that you want. I’m not so sure about which group should I change to
Lock the «root» account.
If you were using ecryptfs (encrypted home directory). Mount your encrypted directory using ecryptfs-recover-private and edit /.ecryptfs/Private.mnt to reflect your new home directory.
Log out.
Change the hostname, which is the computer name
Type the following command to edit /etc/hostname using nano or vi text editor:
Delete the old name and setup new name.
Next Edit the /etc/hosts file:
Replace any occurrence of the existing computer name with your new one.
Reboot the system to changes take effect:
Change the password
Super easy, isn’t it?
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How To Change Username On Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint Or Fedora
This is a step by step guide on how to change your username on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint (and other Linux distributions based on Debian/Ubuntu), and Fedora.
The instructions explain how to change (rename) the username along with the user’s home folder name, as well as a simple work-around for potential issues with configuration files that still point to the old home folder name. There’s also a step for changing the full name (display name), which is shown on the login screen and other places throughout the desktop.
1. Create a temporary user and give it sudo privileges.
We’ll login with the temporary user to perform the username change commands. This way there won’t be any issues running them from the same user we’re trying to rename (e.g. processes running for that user, etc.).
Add a new temporary user ( tempuser ) and give it sudo privileges on Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint (after entering a password you can keep pressing Enter to skip entering the rest of information):
Add a new tempuser and give it sudo privileges on Fedora:
2. Login with tempuser and change (rename) the username, home folder and group.
Logout, and on the login screen select tempuser and login with that user. Next, open a terminal and run these command to change your username, home folder, and group from oldusername to newusername :
Some applications will show errors when changing the username, because in some cases there are configuration files that point to the old username’s home folder. A solution for this is to create a symbolic link from the new home folder to the old home folder:
4. Change the display name / full name (firstname lastname).
In my case, trying to rename a username on Ubuntu 19.04 and Fedora 29, the display name (full name) remained unchanged on the GDM3 login screen and on the user menu. This can be changed though, using:
Replace firstname and lastname with your first and last name, or whatever you want to show up on the login screen and various other places throughout the system. firstname and lastname can also be one item, e.g. your new username.
The chfn command is available on Fedora in the util-linux-user package, which is not installed by default. You can install it on Fedora using:
After installing this package, the chfn command should work on Fedora.
5. Login using the new (renamed) username, and delete the temporary user created on step 1.
Logout and select the new, renamed username from the login screen, and proceed to login. You can now delete the temporary user created in step 1 ( tempuser ) and its home folder:
How do I change my username in Ubuntu?
How do I change a username in Linux?
The procedure is pretty simple:
What is my Ubuntu terminal Username?
To quickly reveal the name of the logged in user from the GNOME desktop used on Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions, click the system menu in the top-right corner of your screen. The bottom entry in the drop-down menu is the user name.
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Changing user passwords on Linux
How do I change my username in Unix?
The straight out way of doing this is:
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Remove a Linux user
How do I find my username and password in Linux?
The /etc/shadow file stores contain the password information for the user account and optional aging information.
…
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How do I know my username in Linux?
5) Checking user information in Linux, using lslogins command
How do I find my username in Linux?
To get the current user name, type:
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How do I change my email name?
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What is Sudo password?
Sudo password is the password that you put in the instalation of ubuntu/yours user password, if you don’t have a password just click enter at all. Thats easy probaly you need to be an administrator user for using sudo.
How do I create a username and password in Linux?
Linux: How to Add Users and Create Users with useradd
How do I change my Ubuntu username and password?
How to change a user password in Ubuntu
How Do I Change My Username in Linux?
Prerequisite
You need to have Linux running on the virtual machine configured on your system. When you install Ubuntu, it requires information like username and password. After providing this information, you will be able to access all the applications and have the privilege to use them.
Modify Current Username
Step 1- User Description: To change the current username in Linux, we use the command to know about the current user and directory. “Whoami” is used to display the username, and “pwd” is used to display commands used to outright the execution. The third command, “gnome-session-quit” is used for logging out from the current account in the system.
After the above command, the system will prompt a message to log out or it will automatically quit from the system.
Step 2-Enter in the command shell: When the login page is displayed, type keys Ctrl+alt+f1 then a command prompt will appear. The system will demand a username and password for the login.
Step 3-Set password for root: Modify the password for the root user. After providing login details, we will implement the appended command to set a password for the root user.
After this command, we will type the current password of the user. Then, you can input the new password you want. After retyping, you will see that password is updated successfully.
Step 4:Login as root: Now, the user will log in to the system as root. After applying the password, you will see that name is changed from aqsayasin to root. The root is a temporary name.
Step 5-Change username from Aqsa Yasin to aqsay: We will change the root name with our desired one. Once the name is initialized, the home directory name will be altered. Following the change, the user name on the login screen is changed.
#usermod –l aqsay aqsayasin
# usermod –d /home/aqsay –m aqsay
#chfn –f aqsay aqsay
After login to “aqsay”, go to the terminal and write the three commands we used to execute earlier in this guide to check the description of a user after alteration. By using these commands, you can see that the username is changed successfully.
Add a New User and then Modify the Username
In accordance with modifying the username, one must have a user in Linux. If there is no existence of any user, we will see how the user is created and modified in the command line of Ubuntu. This creation and modification require the following steps:
Step 1-Add user: You will add a user by the following command. “hania123” is the name we want to give to a new user.
Step 2-Identification: After completing the description process, we will log out from the system to ensure the user’s presence on the homepage of Ubuntu.
Step 3-Modification: Moving forward, we will modify the root name of the directory with the help of the below-cited command.
After modifying the user, you will now want to see all users created in Ubuntu. For this purpose, we will use the “ls” command
Now, you will see the names of the users. Then you will log out from the system. After logging in, you will notice that the root name that has been changed from “Aqsa Yasin” to“zahra123”
Determine the User Account Currently in Linux
To know the currently logged-in user, we will come to know it by using a couple of commands.
The “Who” command will let you know about the identity of the user i.e., name of the current user is “aqsay”.
The same answer is obtained by applying “whoami” as a comparative to “who”. Moreover, the same answer is obtained by echoing the “$user”.
One letter word “w” is more effective in giving output in a detailed form. It provides the information of the last 5,10 and 15 minutes, mostly including boot time, etc.
TTY shows the terminal type you are using,:0 means the mouse and keyboard connected with. FROM represent the name of the host. IDLE shows the idle time of the user in the system. [email protected] depicts the time, the user was logged in. JCPU and PCPU represent the joint and process CPU timings. Whereas WHAT shows the current process of the user.
To obtain more details about the user, as we have to know who the user is. The below command is the better way to start.
This command gives us user id (uid), groups of them (gid), and shows the group in which the user has become the member.
If you want to obtain the output of only groups, specific less cluttered view of groups can be obtained.
Conclusion
In the article mentioned above, we have described changing usernames using some set of commands in the terminal and on a simple command-line shell.
About the author
Aqsa Yasin
I am a self-motivated information technology professional with a passion for writing. I am a technical writer and love to write for all Linux flavors and Windows.