How to change home folder and all its subfolder

Posted September 17, 2014

I have changed my username from “user” to “newuser”, but when I checked, with :

ls -la

I got that some folder is used in my old name, like this.

drwxr-xr-x 3 root      root  4096 Sep 16 01:35 ..
-rw------- 1 newuser   user 2643 Sep 17 11:25 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 newuser   user  220 Sep 16 01:06 .bash_logout

I want to change the “user” to “newuser”

Can I do it ?

didit

gparent • September 17, 2014

If the old username is still appearing, then that means the old user still exists and you’re using a new one. You can use ‘chown’ to take ownership of the files, however the files you listed are user specific and would be better left as-is (unless they are in the wrong user’s home directory)

Submit an answer

You can type!ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Juraj Kostolanský • September 17, 2014

Hi,

you can rename the “user” to “newuser” with

usermod -l user -m -d /home/newuser newuser

-m for move-home, -d for new home directory path

If you want to rename the group “user” to “newuser”, you need this command

groupmod -n newuser user

-n for new-name

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $100 of credit to try our products over 60 days!