====== Changing a User's UID ======

Having consistency of UID and GID on UNIX is extremely important if you have multiple servers and clients that you want to maintain a consistent identity on. Be it for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System|NFS]], [[https://git-scm.com/|Git]], or any other administrative task. Having the same IDs for your users across different computers really helps.

Sadly, almost no OS install utilities allow you to specify the UID/GID of the default user that's created during setup, which means we have to do this afterward, thus this tutorial exists to give me and everyone a clear path to UID consistency.

===== Linux =====

I almost always run [[https://www.debian.org/|Debian]] on my Linux machines, thus I can't say this is the right way of doing it in other distros, I can't see why it wouldn't apply to others as well.

<code=bash>
# Ensure no processes are running from the old user.
pkill -U $OLD_UID

# Change UID/GID using usermod.
usermod -u $NEW_UID -g $NEW_GID $USERNAME

# Fix file permissions to use the new UID.
find / -uid $OLD_UID -exec chown -h $NEW_UID {} +
find / -gid $OLD_UID -exec chgrp -h $NEW_GID {} +
</code>

If you're using a Raspberry Pi with its graphical desktop environment, you should use ''raspi-config'' to disable booting straight to X.