Changing the short username of the administrator.

T

Travis86

Registered
Is there any way to change the short (unix) name of the administrator? It's greyed out in the Accounts preferences. I tried creating another user with administrator privilages, logging out the main administrator, and changing the name, but it was greyed out then, too.

How can I change it?
 
Hmmm... That looks hard, but I guess if it were easy, the short name box wouldn't be greyed. I might still do it, though. But on the other hand, I dunno.

Thanks.
 
I would recommend NOT changing any names or short names unless it's absolutely necessary. It's just a name, and you rarely have to type it in anywhere unless you're on an authenticated network or something.

If it's just a name you don't like or don't prefer, I would stick with it and live with it. You can really mess up a system to the point of having to reinstall OS X if you go mucking around changing names and stuff. Even Apple recommends against it.
 
The easiest and safest way I know of to change any user's short name is to:
  1. Create a new administrative user with the short name that you want to have
  2. Logon to the new account
  3. Delete the old user account
  4. Copy the contents of the old user folder into the user folder for the new account
You may have to clean up a few ownership and permissions issues and there may be the occasional problem with symbolic links or aliases pointing to the old directory, but in general this will work.

I will say that I am like ElDiabloConCaca and unless I simply could not tolerate the short name I would leave well enough alone.
 
If this has to do with the person's name taking up too much space in the menu when Fast User Switching is enabled, use Winswitch and you can just use a logo and drop down and the names/photos are configurable regardless of what the account name is.
 
perfessor101 said:
The easiest and safest way I know of to change any user's short name is to:
  1. Create a new administrative user with the short name that you want to have
  2. Logon to the new account
  3. Delete the old user account
  4. Copy the contents of the old user folder into the user folder for the new account
Click to expand...

I'd reverse those last two points -- you don't want to delete the old user until you've already copied over any settings that you want. I believe under Panther that if you choose to delete a user, the user's folder will be moved to the trash, or deleted immediately, depending on which option you choose.
 
perfessor101 said:
You may have to clean up a few ownership and permissions issues
Click to expand...
If you go to NetInfo Manager and switch the UID #'s of the new user to the old user then you shouldn't have any permissions issues.

;)
 
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