Users – How to Rename a Unix User Account

administrationusers

I installed Ubuntu on a computer that is now used by somebody else. I renamed the account with her name, but it only changes the fullname, not the user name, which is still displayed in the top right (in the fast-user-switch-applet). Is there a command to rename an Unix user account?

I've thought of creating a new user account with the new name, and then copying everything in the "old" home to the home of the new account. Would it be enough? But then I think the files would have the old account's permissions' owner? So should I do chown -R newuser ~?

Is there a simpler/recommended way to do this?

Best Answer

Try

usermod --move-home --login <new-login-name> --home <new-home-dir> <old-login-name>

The --move-home option moves the old home directory's contents to the new one given by the --home option which is created if it doesn't already exist.

If you want the primary user group to match the new-login-name, add --gid <new-login-name> to the command above, but the group must be pre-existing.

See the man page for more info:

man usermod

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How to get rsync to complain if user not found

The rsync command doesn't have a mechanism for handling this directly, so I would use a different approach. I would scan the source filesystem tree, collecting the usernames (and groups) of all files present there:

# List of usernames owning files under 'src'
find src -printf "%u\n" | sort -u | tee /tmp/src.users

# List of group memberships for files under 'src'
find src -printf "%g\n" | sort -u | tee /tmp/src.groups

# Copy files to target system
scp -p /tmp/src.{users,groups} dest:/tmp/

I would then ensure that all users existed on the target system ready for rsync to use. Run these commands on the target system:

# List "missing" users
getent passwd | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u | comm -13 - /tmp/src.users

# List "missing" groups
getent group | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u | comm -13 - /tmp/src.groups

Proper way to move user directory to a new home partition

I use cp -vfa, but the rsync -vaH (mentioned by @Kusalananda in a comment) would also work. In the case of latter, don't forget that all directories should end with / (i.e. /home/gradient will be not okay, /home/gradient/ yes).

Once in a life we all should really read the ls, cp, rm, bash and rsync manual pages, they can really a lot.

If the target directory is on the same partition, a simple mv -vf would be also ok.

Don't forget to update the home directory entry belonging to the user in /etc/passwd.

Best Answer

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How to get rsync to complain if user not found

Proper way to move user directory to a new home partition

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