Changing user and group IDs on a Linux systemEdit

Created , updated

Just say I want to change the user and group ID of a git user to 599 and 599, respectively, from their previous values of 507 and 509, respectively:

# grep git /etc/{passwd,group} # make note of existing IDs
# find / -uid 507 -or -gid 509 2> /dev/null | grep -v /proc | less # audit filesystem for files
# groupmod -g 599 git
# usermod -g 599 -u 599 git
# /etc/init.d/git stop
# find / -uid 501 -exec chown -v git {} \;
# find / -gid 509 -exec chgrp -v git {} \;
# /etc/init.d/git start

In this example, as the git user happens to be running a git-daemon instance, note that I exclude the /proc filesystem and stop the service and restart it after the change to be sure that no new files get created with the wrong IDs. Also note that if the user has files outside its $HOME their ownership needs to be changed manually.