> >Make sure the user > >to be renamed is not logged in. Use mv /home/olduser /home/newuser. > > Didn't work for me. The cp -a approach that I suggested worked fine,
cp -a copies all symlinks as-is, and there's not much point duplicating data and then deleting it (what if /home is over half full?). If cp worked for you but mv didn't then the reason is unrelated. My guess is you didn't sort out the (numeric!) user and group IDs. You have ownership and permission issues to deal with for that kind of job, and you need to deal with numeric and alphanumeric user IDs separately. If you just wanted to change the name associated with a numeric ID, the fastest and esiest way is to just edit /etc/passwd & Co - change the name but leave the numbers. Hm, were the old and new user directory locations on different partitions? In that case, yes you do need cp -a instead of mv. mv will attempt to copy if source and dest are not on the same filesystem but I don't know whether it'll do a good job of it equivalent to cp -a. > Using cp -a also means that you can copy your own home space while > you're logged in, which is convenient. While you're logged in??? Don't do it. It has never been a good idea to saw off the branch one is sitting on unless one has previously carefully established a safety net or otherwise ensured one will be landing on the feet. As you need to do some of the changes as root anyway you might as well fix up the rest as root too. If you changed numeric IDs an appropriate chown -Rh will fix it without copying the lot. And you never have the old user logged in. Create a new user and log in as that one before becoming root if you need to do things with the GUI. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
