HOWTO: Enable console autologin on Ubuntu
This entry explains how you can automatically login to your Ubuntu machine. Warning: the following is a security hazard on network attached and publicly accessible machines . On throwaway development boxes, on the other hand, you sometimes need to reboot often and want to skip the annoying login. Only use this on inherently private machines: those that are physically secure and disconnected from the internet. Traditional Linux On traditionally configured linux machines, download mingetty from sourceforge , compile and install it and then edit /etc/inittab . For each console, replace lines such as 1:1:respawn:/etc/getty 9600 tty with 1:1:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin USERNAME tty1 To be automatically presented with a logged-in console on boot, also disable your graphical login managers. These are usually active on console 7. Ubuntu Ubuntu sometimes deviates from standard practice; the boot process is one example. First, to install mingetty, just run sudo apt-get install min