How to change users full name on Debian

Question

I'm working on a Debian server as an inexperienced admin. I need to change the full name of a user (not the login name) provided during adduser USERNAME. How can I do this? I didn't find such an option in usermod (http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/usermod8.html).

score 33 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:29

33

The GECOS field in /etc/password can be modified with the chfn(1) command.

chfn -f "Joe Blow" jblow

answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:29

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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This also works on RHEL / CentOS. – Fer García Jan 07 '19 at 21:11
Still works on Debian 10 Buster, XFCE, FWIW – scrat.squirrel Feb 07 '21 at 17:16

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:30

14

You can do the following

adduser username -c "John Snow" -s /bin/bash

modify

usermod -c "Snow John" username

To verify users' full name finger username

answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:30

Valentin Bajrami

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score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:30

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You can edit /etc/passwd directly the full name a field in this file.

answered Jul 10 '13 at 22:30

squareborg

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although, if you are doing that be sure to use `vipw` instead of simply editing the file the usual way – Knoxy May 08 '20 at 00:49

How to change users full name on Debian

3 Answers3