[Macworld]

Post your comments for Changing the short username in Leopard here

[alansky]

Dan, when I looked at Advanced Options for my primary user account, I discovered two aliases that I never created. One was a long string of numbers. I deleted both aliases. Any idea where these unwanted aliases might have come from or why they might have been there? Could someone have been trying to gain unauthorized access to my account?
Thanks.

[Vito]

Great tip. Got my short name alright.Unfortunately all my user settings are gone along with my user files. All of which are in the old username's folder. Do I have to manually transfer this stuff or can I use some kind of Leopard magic to restore my user files/prefs?
Lesson learned, if it ain't broke, leave it alone. Grr.

[Aberdeen]

My short username and Home folder name were different, so I used the last method to change both of them. I screwed up terribly when I accidentally omitted step seven. My home folder (including all documents and music) was completely gone. It had been replaced with a clean and completely new user account/home folder. I spent a couple hours resorting the entire system with Time Machine. Afterwards I managed to pull it off, reading the directions very, very carefully. But unfortunately now my Time Machine backups are horrendously slow (5KB of 15.7GB have been backed up in the last half hour) Any suggestions to help speed this up?

[Dan Frakes]

alansky said:

Dan, when I looked at Advanced Options for my primary user account, I discovered two aliases that I never created. One was a long string of numbers. I deleted both aliases. Any idea where these unwanted aliases might have come from or why they might have been there? Could someone have been trying to gain unauthorized access to my account?

Note where I said "Do not make any other changes" ;) The aliases box also displays other UUIDs (universally unique identifiers) created for your account for various purposes. Like your username and primary UUID, they still require some sort of authentication for access, so it's not as though someone could somehow generate an alias and instantly have access to your account.

That said, I doubt you'll see any horrible consequences from deleting the two you deleted. But I'd leave them alone in the future.

[Dan Frakes]

Vito said:

Great tip. Got my short name alright.Unfortunately all my user settings are gone along with my user files. All of which are in the old username's folder. Do I have to manually transfer this stuff or can I use some kind of Leopard magic to restore my user files/prefs?

It sounds like you changed the path to your home directory (in Accounts preferences) without performing the crucial second part?renaming the folder using Terminal. (Or that you didn't enter the correct path.)

Open the Advanced Options for the affected account and see what the path is in Home Directory; it should be /Users/name

Then open the Users folder at the root level of your hard drive; you should see a folder called name (where, of course, name is the same as in the previous step: /Users/name)

If the two aren't the same, there's your problem.

[Dan Frakes]

Aberdeen said:

My short username and Home folder name were different, so I used the last method to change both of them. I screwed up terribly when I accidentally omitted step seven. My home folder (including all documents and music) was completely gone. It had been replaced with a clean and completely new user account/home folder. I spent a couple hours resorting the entire system with Time Machine. Afterwards I managed to pull it off, reading the directions very, very carefully. But unfortunately now my Time Machine backups are horrendously slow (5KB of 15.7GB have been backed up in the last half hour) Any suggestions to help speed this up?

Time Machine will indeed re-backup after restoring. As for why it's so slow in your case, I really have no idea; it's probably unrelated to the various changes you made with respect to your home folder.

[Imaginos1892]

What happened to Groups? In the dim (pre-X) past there was Users & Groups with simple procedures for adding new Groups and assigning Users to them. MacOS X creates a bunch of groups but provides no means to manage them. Your tip about the Advanced settings helps, but how do you tell which group corresponds to GID 20?
I like to keep iTunes data in /Users/shared, and have it all owned by the Admin user. Some features of iTunes seem to require read/write permission to work properly, but I don't want to give Everyone write access. A Group containing all local Users and given read/write access would make it work, but I can find no facility for setting up such a thing. Do I have to edit /etc/passwd by hand?
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

[Dan Frakes]

Imaginos1892 said:

What happened to Groups? In the dim (pre-X) past there was Users & Groups with simple procedures for adding new Groups and assigning Users to them. MacOS X creates a bunch of groups but provides no means to manage them. Your tip about the Advanced settings helps, but how do you tell which group corresponds to GID 20?

When viewing the Accounts pane of System Preferences, you'll notice, in the list on the left, Groups in small print. Click on the small disclosure triangle next to Group to view current groups (except those managed by the OS, such as admin and wheel).

Clicking on a group in the list will display, to the right, the membership of that group; you can add users to, and remove users from, the group here.

If you right-click (or Control-click) on a group name, you'll see an Advanced Options item in the resulting contextual menu; choose it to view the group ID.

To create a new group, click on the plus (+) sign at the bottom of the Accounts list; in the resulting dialog, change the New Account pop-up menu to Group and then name the group.

If you want to make one group a member of another group, right-click (or Control-click) on the name of the latter; in the resulting contextual menu, just below Advanced Options, you'll see Add User or Group; choose it and then type in the name of the group you want to add as a member.

Hope this helps ;)

[Imaginos1892]

It does help, but the Groups list did not appear until after I followed your procedure and added a new Group, LocalUsers. There still does not appear to be any way to show or use the 50 or so Groups that are automatically generated; in fact the Info dialog box has been changed. If you click on the Group in a 10.4 Info box it pops up a long list with names like: appowner, authedusers, clamav, netusers, smmsp and xgridagent. In 10.5 the popup lists are gone; clicking on the "+" brings up a dialog box and the only Group I see is the one I just created. This may be a good thing - user files probably shouldn't belong to those Groups.
Adding Users to the new Group does not change the Users' GIDs; they're all still 20. What is Group 20? Can I manage Group 20, or remove Users from it? The new LocalUsers Group's GID is 501. How does MacOS X know the Users are in the new Group? Would it be safe to manually change the Users' GIDs from 20 to 501?
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

[chetiboy]

Would an upddate in ChangeYourUsername do this unearthed workaround to change the shortname / home folder namer...?
I am very eager to change my short name, I'm new to Mac and I thought I could just put whatever I desired and change it later, I didn't know I couldn't change it.
Question though, if I do the "fully monty", would I lose my address book contacts, itunes library / mp3s, and applications?
From the syntax (and since I'm a newbie on Mac), it looks like it's "move oldusernamefolder to newusernamefolder" meaning an overwrite? Also, once all "fully monty steps" are fulfilled, there will be a need to delete the Old Username wouldn't it?
Please do help... Thank you so much.

[Dan Frakes]

chetiboy said:

Question though, if I do the "fully monty", would I lose my address book contacts, itunes library / mp3s, and applications?

No, all these will remain as they are; you're simply changing your account username, changing the name of your home folder, and telling OS X to use the newly-renamed home folder. Your personal files and data are unchanged.

chetiboy said:

From the syntax (and since I'm a newbie on Mac), it looks like it's "move oldusernamefolder to newusernamefolder" meaning an overwrite? Also, once all "fully monty steps" are fulfilled, there will be a need to delete the Old Username wouldn't it?

The Unix mv command works differently depending on whether you're "moving" an item to a different volume or the same volume. If you "move" an item to a different volume, a copy is made on that volume, and then the original is deleted. However, if you "move" an item to a different location on the same volume, or to the same location but with a different name, the data itself is left alone; only the path to the item?or its name, in this case?is changed.

[wstevens]

Dan -
What do you think of this approach?
1. Log in as Root (enable this using the Directory Utility)
2. Change the name of home folder
3. Open the Accounts System Preference
4. After authenticating, right click the account you want to change, and Advanced Options window will appear
5. The options include the ability to change the short name and to designate the home directory (which now has a new name)
6. Restart the computer
7. Disable Root (disable this using the Directory Utility)

[chetiboy]

This solved my issue with my lackluster unkempt shortname.

Thank you so much!