To be able to perform the subject change, log into an account on your machine where you are sure to have the administrator rights that will allow you to fiddle unencumbered with the OSX system preferences.

You must also have access to the ‘root’ level of your machine to perform this change.

The ‘root’ access can be achieved via the ‘Terminal‘ program of your machine when granting you, as administrator, ‘super user’ status via the ‘sudo‘ commands that follow .

1.) First, the administrator must change the actual ‘short name’ of the ‘standard’ user.

• The ‘short name’ of a ‘standard’ user, for example, can be used for the purpose of logging into a Mac machine and also for naming the icon of the user’s home directory.
• In this case, the administrator will be logging into the ‘admin’ account to perform the change.

2.) Second, the administrator must change the ‘short name’ of the ‘standard’ user’s old home directory and move all of the files and folders to the newly named home directory.

• To start, go ahead and open up the ‘System Preferences‘ tab via the  ’Apple’ icon located in the ’Finder’s upper left corner.
• Once you have successfully navigated into the ‘System Preferences’ menu, go ahead and click on the ‘Users & Groups’ icon.
• Enable the lower left corner ‘open lock’ of the ‘Users & Groups’ tab by entering your administrator credentials.

3.) After enabling your right to perform the upcoming change, go ahead and ‘right-click’ quickly over the name of the ‘standard’ user for whom you wish to make this user ‘short name’ change.

• After you ‘right-click’, quickly move the cursor over the now exposed ‘Advanced Options’ tab and release the cursor to engage the ‘Advanced Options’ of the ‘Users & Group’ tab.
• Upon engagement, the administrator will see a total of seven potential input cells within the ‘Advanced Options’ form.

4.) For the purposes of this tutorial, the administrator will use input cell number ‘three-from-the-top’ titled ‘Account name’ and input cell number ‘five-from-the-top’ titled ‘Home directory‘.

• Go ahead and change the ‘Account name’ from the old user ‘short name’ to the new ‘short name’ for the subject ‘standard’ user.

5.) Also at this time, go ahead and change the ‘Home directory’ of the user to include the new ‘short name’ for the subject ‘standard’ user, as follows:

/Users/newshortname

6.) Now before hitting the ‘OK’ button and sending the form to your ‘kernal’, let’s go ahead and open up the ‘Terminal’ program of your machine and perform a bit of required maintenance, at this juncture.

• There are two terminal commands that we are going to issue, as follows:

sudo mv /Users/oldshortname /Users/newshortname

and,

sudo chown -R newshortname /Users/newshortname

7.) After typing the first ‘sudo’ command shown above into the window of your machine’s ‘Terminal’ program and hitting ‘enter’, go ahead and enter your administrator’s password credentials via the ‘Terminal’ program (at the prompt) to activate your ‘super user’ access to the root directory of the machine.

• Upon execution of the first ‘sudo’ command, the terminal program will move the contents of the subject ‘standard’ user’s old home directory to the subject ‘standard’ user’s newly named home directory.

8.) Next, we must properly set the file ownership and permissions of the documents and folders of the subject ‘standard’ user’s old home directory, now that the documents and folders of the subject ‘standard’ user’s old home directory have been moved to the newly named home directory, as follows:

sudo chown -R newshortname /Users/newshortname

• Once again, go ahead and enter your administrator’s password credentials via the ‘Terminal’ program (at the prompt) to activate your ‘super user’ access to the root directory of the machine after keying in the above second ‘sudo’ command into the window of your machine’s ‘Terminal’ program and hitting ‘enter’.

9.) After performing the above two ‘sudo’ commands as directed via your machine’s ‘Terminal’ program, the administrator may now hit the ‘OK’ button on the ‘Users & Groups’, ‘Advanced Options’ form in the open ‘System Preferences’ tab.

• Go ahead and exit the ‘Terminal’ program of your machine at this time.

10.) To confirm all is well, log out of your administrator’s account and then log back in using the changed ‘standard’ user’s login credentials.

• No passwords were changed in this exercise, so the same password for the changed ‘standard’ user, if any, should apply without fail.
• The new ‘short name’ should appear on the ‘home’ icon of the ‘standard’ user’s directory.

11.) Congratulations! You, as ‘administrator’ of your machine, have successfully completed the change of a ‘standard’ user’s ‘short name’ and ‘home directory’ in OSX Lion.

Robert Weber, MBA

Follow me on Twitter @rwebaz

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