Change Home Directory in Linux
Written by A.Jesin Sunday, 30 January 2011 10:43
Change the home directory of a Linux user with a simple usermod command. While creating a user if you didn’t specify any –home parameter Linux assumes the home directory of the user to be /home/username even if you did specify you can later change it to something else according to your needs. Apart from changing the home directory using the usermod command you’ll have to assign proper ownership and permissions to the new folder. You can also change the home directory by editing the /etc/passwd file. I’ll outline both the steps here.
Change the home directory using usermod
This method is for command line warriors. Before you use the usermod command the new home directory should be created, ownership should be assigned to the new user and the folder should be chmoded correctly so that no one else can access it. Run the following commands to do it.
mkdir /home/new_home_directory
chown username:username /home/new_home_directory
chmod 700 /home/new_home_directory
usermod --home /home/new_home_directory username
Change the home directory by editing /etc/passwd
Alternatively you can also edit the /etc/passwd to change the home directory. But you should be careful not to edit anything else. Before editing this file it is always better to create the new home directory and assign proper permissions and ownership to it. Execute the following commands.
mkdir /home/new_home_directory
chown username:username /home/new_home_directory
chmod 700 /home/new_home_directory
Open the /etc/passwd file using a text editor and locate the line containing the required username it should look something like this
username:x:500:500::/home/username:/bin/bash
change it to
username:x:500:500::/home/new_home_directory:/bin/bash
Save the file.
Finally copy all the old content to the new home directory
cp -f /home/username/* /home/new_home_dir/
Also read:
- Command to Display Directory Sizes in Linux
- Change the default runlevel in Linux
- Change the default Directory Index in Apache Server
- Change Registered To in Windows
- Disable Directory Listing in Apache Web Server
