[Dreambiz]

I am on the cusp of upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. I've long wanted to change my short username.
I only recently learned of your Changeshortusername utility for Tiger. It appears I can use this now, or follow the steps in this article after the upgrade is complete.
So the question is, would it be better to change the short username BEFORE or AFTER I upgrade to Leopard?

[wstevens]

I would use Dan's excellent ChangeShortName utility in Tiger, before I updated to Leopard.

[Dan Frakes]

wstevens said:

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)

This is effectively the same procedure; I personally prefer not to enable and disable the root user just to rename the folder in the Finder, so I use the sudo move command in Terminal.

[Dan Frakes]

Dreambiz said:

I am on the cusp of upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. I've long wanted to change my short username.

I only recently learned of your Changeshortusername utility for Tiger. It appears I can use this now, or follow the steps in this article after the upgrade is complete.

So the question is, would it be better to change the short username BEFORE or AFTER I upgrade to Leopard?

I'd probably upgrade and then use the procedure in this article, only because it seems that Leopard is better about automatically updating system-related preference files that include the path to your home folder as values.

[jonasdd]

What is the difference between your 3 ways to change it and just typing new short name to Accounts Pane>Password tab>User Name-field?
This also allows to use this new short name in password dialogs.

[Dreambiz]

Dan,
Followed the instructions for The Full Monty to the letter. However, after issuing the sudo MV command and logging back into the account that was supposed to change, it didn't rename the old home directory folder to the new (so I now have a generic desktop, etc.).

When I try to rename it through the finder from the temporary admin account created for this purpose, I receive the message "you do not have sufficient access privileges to rename the item".
A phone call to Apple support was of no use. They said to Repair Permissions (which I did) but as soon as there is any mention of changing the short username or using Terminal, they walled up and said they won't support it.
So, the question is: How can I rename the home folder when I don't have access privileges to do so (and changing the privileges via 'get information' doesn't work)?

[Martian]

Can anyone see a problem with simply:
* Creating NewUser (using the desired names),
* Select All inside OldUser then drag and drop all of its contents into NewUser
* Delete OldUser
This sounds so simple and foolproof, but I wonder.

[verdilac]

Hi Dan,
Great article I've been wanting to do "the full monty" for ages.
I have one question....could you please be more clear on the exact way to type into the terminal:
sudo mv /Users/oldusername /Users/newusername
I'm not quite clear where the "spaces" are, and I'd hate to screw up this crucial step. Is there a space after "sudo" and "mv" and "oldusername"?
Besides that I was wondering if anyone had total success with the FULL MONTY.
THANKS

[DanMartin]

Hi Dan,
I tried "the full monty" but ended up creating a new account rather than changing the name of the folder of an existing one.
Might it be that I may have messed up the number of spaces in the commnand that I should have typed into Terminal? I assumed that there was one space between what had to be typed in. Was I wrong?

[Dan Frakes]

jonasdd said:

What is the difference between your 3 ways to change it and just typing new short name to Accounts Pane>Password tab>User Name-field?

This also allows to use this new short name in password dialogs.

Missed a bunch of questions here. The answer to this question is that you're changing the full name, not the short username.

[Dan Frakes]

Dreambiz said:

Followed the instructions for The Full Monty to the letter. However, after issuing the sudo MV command and logging back into the account that was supposed to change, it didn't rename the old home directory folder to the new (so I now have a generic desktop, etc.).


When I try to rename it through the finder from the temporary admin account created for this purpose, I receive the message "you do not have sufficient access privileges to rename the item".

A phone call to Apple support was of no use. They said to Repair Permissions (which I did) but as soon as there is any mention of changing the short username or using Terminal, they walled up and said they won't support it.

So, the question is: How can I rename the home folder when I don't have access privileges to do so (and changing the privileges via 'get information' doesn't work)?

The problem here appears to be that the sudo mv command didn't work. Did you get any sort of error in Terminal?

[Dan Frakes]

{quote:title=verdilac wrote:}{quote}
Great article I've been wanting to do "the full monty" for ages.
I have one question....could you please be more clear on the exact way to type into the terminal:
sudo mv /Users/oldusername /Users/newusername
I'm not quite clear where the "spaces" are, and I'd hate to screw up this crucial step. Is there a space after "sudo" and "mv" and "oldusername"?

That's correct: space after sudo, after mv, and between old username and /Users

[Dan Frakes]

DanMartin said:

I tried "the full monty" but ended up creating a new account rather than changing the name of the folder of an existing one.

Might it be that I may have messed up the number of spaces in the commnand that I should have typed into Terminal? I assumed that there was one space between what had to be typed in. Was I wrong?

See the previous message for where spaces should occur.

[Dreambiz]

No, Dan, I received no error message after entering the command. It's like it just accepted it and returned with the same command prompt. This happened twice, once during my initial attempt at the procedure, then again, after I ran Repair Permissions.

Where does this sudo MV command get its authorization from? I didn't specifically authorize the admin account I created, other than making it an Admin account.