Changing Short User Name in NetInfo Manager

[GadgetLover]

Anyone know the easiest way to change the SHORT name of a User using NetInfo Manager (or Terminal) without f-ing up anything? I was thinking about adding a single character to my user name:

Present:

Billy Bob Thorton [long] (so his wife says )
billy [short] (more likely)

Desired:

billyb [short]. (A little more length with minor surgery).

HelP!

 

[kommakazi]

I tried doing this myself, I believe so long as you keep the user mapped with it's current user folder or rename the user folder as root and remap the edited user to it, it will work. Only problem I experienced with this is I did this with an administrator's account, and it wouldn't let me sudo. You will have to manually add the edited user name to the list of sudoers (sorry I don't know where that is). Rather than editing the user, I would probably reccomend just creating a new user and transferring stuff over from the old user folder as root? It would probably be less of a hassle and more fail-proof. NetInfoManager can be a dangerous tool to screw your users up, I've had some bad experience with it

 

[GadgetLover]

Originally posted by testuser
Only change the username value next to the "name" key. Save your changes, and then exit NetInfo Manger.

I attached an edited version of my NetInfo Manager window. Are you saying that I *only* need to change the "name" field (circled in red on my jpg)? What about the other fields that seem to also use the shortname (see blue dots on jpg)?

 

[GadgetLover]

Exactly what I needed -- thanx

 

[Mars]

testuser's posts is correct in all it says, but a couple of additional items in order to make the transition between usernames smooth...

1. In NetInfo Manager, scan through all of the groups, and for any that contain the old username, change those values to the new username. This is very necessary to make the new username function properly with sudo, console, etc!

2. If you renamed the users home directory: Using BBEdit ( http://www.barebones.com/ ), run a batch Find... in ~/Library/ of the user for any occurences of the username and (this is the tricky part) manually decide which occurences should be changed to reflect the newly renamed home directory. This will keep all the naughty applications that store absolute paths in their preferences working without a hitch.

Instead of BBEdit, you could probably use any good file-content-search tool...but BBEdit rocks

Everything seems to work fine...I had to reinstall the full version of Acrobat Reader for it to be the full version...but that's it!

Good luck!
Mars