[solved] Change my username on cloned system

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

I find this command very confusing

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usermod --login ginny14 --move-home --home /home/ginny14 theoldusername
groupmod --new-name ginny14 theoldusername

If we would say actual username is 'actual' and the new username is 'future'. How exactly would the command look like?
Could add actual hostname = hostA, future hostname = hostF

[pbear]

It's not confusing in context. And even without context, surely it's obvious that ginny14 is the new name. So, you should be substituting whatever new name you want to use for ginny14 in the commands. Just as you should be substituting your actual old user name for theoldusername.

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

thanks pbear for your unconfusing remarks. Those lead me to this

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usermod --login future --move-home --home /home/future actual
groupmod --new-name future actual

Spent many an hour. tried over and over again. Have no bloody clue what is going on/ wrong.
I guess something is going wrong by getting root. Thats why i changed to

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su -

root@Tippa:~#
In other situations i get usermod: unrecognised option '--new-name'
That screen i can't copy.

After trying the first account i switched to the2nd account called third and tried root there. This screen i can copy.

third@Tippa:~$

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su -

Password:
root@Tippa:~#

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usermod --login future --move-home --home /home/ future  actual

Usage: usermod [options] LOGIN

Options:
-c, --comment COMMENT new value of the GECOS field
-d, --home HOME_DIR new home directory for the user account
-e, --expiredate EXPIRE_DATE set account expiration date to EXPIRE_DATE
-f, --inactive INACTIVE set password inactive after expiration
to INACTIVE
-g, --gid GROUP force use GROUP as new primary group
-G, --groups GROUPS new list of supplementary GROUPS
-a, --append append the user to the supplemental GROUPS
mentioned by the -G option without removing
him/her from other groups
-h, --help display this help message and exit
-l, --login NEW_LOGIN new value of the login name
-L, --lock lock the user account
-m, --move-home move contents of the home directory to the
new location (use only with -d)
-o, --non-unique allow using duplicate (non-unique) UID
-p, --password PASSWORD use encrypted password for the new password
-R, --root CHROOT_DIR directory to chroot into
-s, --shell SHELL new login shell for the user account
-u, --uid UID new UID for the user account
-U, --unlock unlock the user account
-v, --add-subuids FIRST-LAST add range of subordinate uids
-V, --del-subuids FIRST-LAST remove range of subordinate uids
-w, --add-subgids FIRST-LAST add range of subordinate gids
-W, --del-subgids FIRST-LAST remove range of subordinate gids
-Z, --selinux-user SEUSER new SELinux user mapping for the user account

root@Tippa:~# groupmod future actual
Usage: groupmod [options] GROUP

Options:
-g, --gid GID change the group ID to GID
-h, --help display this help message and exit
-n, --new-name NEW_GROUP change the name to NEW_GROUP
-o, --non-unique allow to use a duplicate (non-unique) GID
-p, --password PASSWORD change the password to this (encrypted)
PASSWORD
-R, --root CHROOT_DIR directory to chroot into

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exit

and Ctrl-Alt-F7 doesn't bring me the new username...

[pbear]

Sorry, don't know why you're having trouble. All I can say is, it worked for me. Have tested twice. Both went through easily, no drama.

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

@pbear, fair enough.

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

Since all went pearshape i did a clean install on the laptop. Now starting the whole HAYDEN procedure again. So when i've made another clone i know how to change the username.

users old , third
Logged in as third. Try to get root

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third@Patty:~$ sudo passwd root
[sudo] password for third:         
Sorry, user third is not allowed to execute '/usr/bin/passwd root' as root on Patty.
third@Patty:~$ 

[AndyMH]

Is third an adminstrator?

menu > admin > users and groups

or you might see (for some reason I have two "users and groups" giving different GUIs?).

If this click on change against the account type.

You will need to be logged in as an admin user to change the privileges on third, assuming old is the first one you created, that is probably an admin user.

[hayden]

An admin account in Mint is essentially is adding a user to the sudo group in linux and other unix-like operating systems. It's just made easy-to-use by using the word "admin" to make it easier to understand for beginners. I'm not knocking it, but that's how it is.

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

Is third an adminstrator?

It wasn't no. Which of all the settings must be activated?

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

For the 2nd time i have made a clean install now with names
third@old-HP and old@old-HP

I have given third these settings, see

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third@old-HP:~$  cd /home && ls
lost+found  old  third  timeshift

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third@old-HP:/home$ ls -la
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root   4096 Oct 18 16:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root  root   4096 Oct 18 16:32 ..
drwx------  2 root  root  16384 Oct 18 15:47 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 17 old   old    4096 Oct 18 18:01 old
drwxr-xr-x 18 third third  4096 Oct 18 18:11 third
drwxr-xr-x  9 root  root   4096 Oct 18 17:00 timeshift

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third@old-HP:/home$ sudo vim /etc/passwd

vim shows

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geoclue:x:121:127::/var/lib/geoclue:/usr/sbin/nologin
old:x:1000:1000:Patty,,,:/home/old:/bin/bash
third:x:1001:1001:,,,:/home/third:/bin/bash

changed into

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geoclue:x:121:127::/var/lib/geoclue:/usr/sbin/nologin
painful:x:1000:1000:Patty,,,:/home/painful:/bin/bash
third:x:1001:1001:,,,:/home/third:/bin/bash

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third@old-HP:/home$ cat /etc/shadow
cat: /etc/shadow: Permission denied

After reboot only third is shownto login...

[hayden]

you also need to change group and shadow files, not just passwd

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

Yes i know, i tried but :

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third@old-HP:/home$ cat /etc/shadow
cat: /etc/shadow: Permission denied

[hayden]

It's giving you permission denied because you are trying to cat the file as the user third, which this user does not have read permissions to that file. If you want to read it as third, then you will have to use sudo which temporarily elevates your access to files owned by root.

use:

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third@old-HP:/home$ sudo cat /etc/shadow

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

I am happy to say i've made a big process today.



Only some leftovers:

With timeshift i've doen a restore snapshot.
Surprisingly all the attempts i ve done before to create usernames remained in the restored OS. But they don't show up in 'users and groups' How get ride of that? Talking about: 'kut' and 'third'. 'fourth' is an actual user i will delete later.

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adler@old-HP:~$ cd /home && ls
adler  fourth  kut  lost+found	third  timeshift

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adler@old-HP:/home$ ls -la
total 44
drwxr-xr-x  8 root   root    4096 Oct 19 17:28 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root   root    4096 Oct 18 16:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x 18 adler  adler   4096 Oct 19 17:14 adler
drwxr-xr-x 17 fourth fourth  4096 Oct 19 17:26 fourth
drwxr-xr-x 17 adler  adler   4096 Oct 19 16:10 kut
drwx------  2 root   root   16384 Oct 18 15:47 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 18 fourth fourth  4096 Oct 19 16:08 third
drwxr-xr-x  9 root   root    4096 Oct 19 17:00 timeshift
adler@old-HP:/home$

I ve finally managed to create a username i like. Point is the links in the sidebar don't work anymore. for now i have just deleted them, but that shouldn't be i guess.


I don't know why the first image doesn't show, it is only 38kb

[hayden]

they don't show up in 'users and groups' How get ride of that?

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sudo rm -rf /home/kut
sudo rm -rf /home/third

In the last picture, who are you logged in as?

Also, in the output of ls of /home you can see permissions are screwed up. the kut directory is owned by adler:adler, and third is owned by fourth:fourth
But removing those folders will clear that up

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

things seem to be cleared up

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adler@old-HP:/home$ ls -la
total 44
drwxr-xr-x  8 root   root    4096 Oct 19 17:28 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root   root    4096 Oct 18 16:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x 18 adler  adler   4096 Oct 19 19:25 adler
drwxr-xr-x 17 fourth fourth  4096 Oct 19 17:26 fourth
drwxr-xr-x 17 adler  adler   4096 Oct 19 16:10 kut
drwx------  2 root   root   16384 Oct 18 15:47 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 18 fourth fourth  4096 Oct 19 16:08 third
drwxr-xr-x  9 root   root    4096 Oct 19 17:00 timeshift
adler@old-HP:/home$ sudo rm -rf /home/kut
[sudo] password for adler:         
adler@old-HP:/home$ sudo rm -rf /home/third
adler@old-HP:/home$ ls -la
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  6 root   root    4096 Oct 19 19:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root   root    4096 Oct 18 16:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x 18 adler  adler   4096 Oct 19 19:25 adler
drwxr-xr-x 17 fourth fourth  4096 Oct 19 17:26 fourth
drwx------  2 root   root   16384 Oct 18 15:47 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  9 root   root    4096 Oct 19 17:00 timeshift
adler@old-HP:~$ cd /home && ls
adler  fourth lost+found timeshift

In the last picture, who are you logged in as?

Not sure i guess adler, not fourth... Do you know what went wrong there?

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

Also, in the output of ls of /home you can see permissions are screwed up. the kut directory is owned by adler:adler, and third is owned by fourth:fourth
But removing those folders will clear that up

kut and third are leftovers from changes i made before doing the last snapshot restore. Don't know why they appeared again?!

[hayden]

things seem to be cleared up

So all is ok? you're not getting the orange triangles anymore in the folder pane in the file browser?

kut and third are leftovers from changes i made before doing the last snapshot restore. Don't know why they appeared again?!

snapshot is probably newer than you think it is.

Not sure i guess adler, not fourth... Do you know what went wrong there?

I'm not sure which issue you asking about here.

[Pepper-Mint-Patty]

So all is ok? you're not getting the orange triangles anymore in the folder pane in the file browser?

I had deleted them. Now there is none of them folders in the sidebar

snapshot is probably newer than you think it is.

Hmmm put it on once a week... whatever.

In the last picture, who are you logged in as?

Not sure i guess adler, not fourth... Do you know what went wrong there?

[hayden]

I had deleted them. Now there is none of them folders in the sidebar

Ok, re-add them. go to your /home/adler folder in the file browswer, click and drag the Documents, Desktop etc.. back over to the pane

Not sure i guess adler, not fourth... Do you know what went wrong there?

still not sure what you mean here