change login name

[petegreenhorn]

hi just wondered if it's possible to change my login name

[bobnutfield]

Type in your terminal:

man usermod

It explains it all

[drs305]

Edited: There are ways to do this without copying the home folder, so I'm going to defer to bobnutfield's advice...

[Thelasko]

Yes, it is.

[prshah]

hi just wondered if it's possible to change my login name

You can change your username by booting into the recovery console, then giving the command

usermod -l newname -m -d /home/newname oldname

this will change your username from oldname to newname, create an appropriate home folder, and copy your files into the new home folder, and set permissions and ownerships accordingly.

You need to do this in the recovery console because usermod will not allow changes to the name of a logged-in user.

Note that this may still cause problems; eg. any cron jobs etc setup in the old username will not be migrated automatically.

In short, unless you have a compelling reason to change the name, don't do it.

[diacad]

prshah: I would like to try this, but I do not know how to boot into the "recovery console". Do you hit a special combination of keys while booting up or what?

[haqking]

prshah: I would like to try this, but I do not know how to boot into the "recovery console". Do you hit a special combination of keys while booting up or what?

i expect you will get moved to your own thread but you can do it by pressing shift if you have single mode.

if it is a dual boot then choose recovery from menu

[nothingspecial]

Please don't bump old threads to the top.

Make your own thread

Closed.