How to change jenkins background OS user on Ubuntu

To change the jenkins user, open the /etc/sysconfig/jenkins (in debian this file is created in /etc/default) and change the JENKINS_USER to whatever you want. 


Make sure that user exists in the system (you can check the user in the /etc/passwd file ).

$JENKINS_USER="user1"

Then change the ownership of the Jenkins home, Jenkins webroot and logs.

chown -R user1:user1 /var/lib/jenkins 
chown -R user1:user1 /var/cache/jenkins

chown -R user1:user1 /var/log/jenkins

Then restart the Jenkins and check the user has changed using a ps command 

/etc/init.d/jenkins restart
ps -ef | grep jenkins

Reference