Linux – How to rename a Unix user

linuxunixuser-accountsuser-management

I have a user named hedgehog and I want him to be named squirrel, but I don't want to change his numeric user ID.

How can I accomplish this?

Best Answer

Under Linux, the usermod command changes user names. It modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line.

To change just the username:

usermod --login new_username old_username

To change the username and home directory name:

usermod --login new_username --move-home --home path_to_the_new_home_dir old_username

You may also want to change the name of the group associated with the user:

groupmod --new-name new_username old_username

Related Solutions

SSH – How to Change Private Key Passphrase

To change the passphrase on your default key:

$ ssh-keygen -p

If you need to specify a key, pass the -f option:

$ ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa

then provide your old and new passphrase (twice) at the prompts. (Use ~/.ssh/id_rsa if you have an RSA key.)

More details from man ssh-keygen:

[...]
SYNOPSIS
    ssh-keygen [-q] [-b bits] -t type [-N new_passphrase] [-C comment]
               [-f output_keyfile]
    ssh-keygen -p [-P old_passphrase] [-N new_passphrase] [-f keyfile]
[...]
     -f filename
             Specifies the filename of the key file.
[...]
     -N new_passphrase
             Provides the new passphrase.

     -P passphrase
             Provides the (old) passphrase.

     -p      Requests changing the passphrase of a private key file instead of
             creating a new private key.  The program will prompt for the file
             containing the private key, for the old passphrase, and twice for
             the new passphrase.
[...]

Linux Bash – How to Sort du -h Output by Size

As of GNU coreutils 7.5 released in August 2009, sort allows a -h parameter, which allows numeric suffixes of the kind produced by du -h:

du -hs * | sort -h

If you are using a sort that does not support -h, you can install GNU Coreutils. E.g. on an older Mac OS X:

brew install coreutils
du -hs * | gsort -h

From sort manual:

-h, --human-numeric-sort compare human readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

SSH – How to Change Private Key Passphrase

Linux Bash – How to Sort du -h Output by Size

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