Change User Name on Linux

User name is utmost important in Linux operating system. Unlike Windows XP and Vista series of consumer oriented OS which sometimes allows single user to automatically log on to desktop without prompting for user name and password, Linux doesn’t come with this convenient (KDE apparently can). Each user must type his or her own user name and password before able to login into shell or desktop.

If you feel that your user name is not attractive enough, or boring or your taste and experience has changed since the user name was first created, use the following command to change the user name in Linux.

usermod -l new login name old login name

Replace new login name with the new user name you want to use in future, and old login name with the existing username to change.

For NIS accounts, additional commands is required to maintain a proper copy of user account across computer network. Run the following commands:

cd /var/yp
make

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 12:10 am and is filed under Operating Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Change User Name on Linux”

  1. George
    September 27th, 2009 08:59
    4

    Your posts are the best! Always helpful!

  2. al_zoony
    February 2nd, 2008 13:23
    3

    Well, it is not kde but rather xdm which is part of the X Windows system. Here is a link that explains the process on a FreeBSD box rather than Linux:
    http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-xdm.html

    A really cool trick for this might be useful is if you have a tv card running mythtv. Here is a link on on technique to achieve this on Gentoo Linux:
    http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV#KDM

  3. admin
    January 31st, 2008 10:35
    2

    Sorry about the mistake. Article will be changed.

  4. josk
    January 31st, 2008 03:58
    1

    Bullshit! You are able to automatically log on to linux desktop without prompting for user name and password. There is KDE settings that you need just modify to enable auto login. At least this is working with KDE desktop and KDM login manager.

    Open control center application > System administration > Login manager (and just change the settings!)

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