mv command

[navin]

Hi,
I'm moving a users homedirectory to differnt directory as his user name changes.Is it need to do chown after doing this.My ? is Is the 2 nd step is necessasry.Pls clear this.
1.mv 1xxx 1yyy
2.chown -R 1yyy(username):group name 1yyy(home)

Thanks

[Mark Greene_1]

If you don't change the ownership of the directory after you move it, the user will not have access to it unless his group membership is the same and there are group read and write permissions on all the files.

mark

[navin]

Thanks mark.So it seems it is really necessary to "chown" after the "mv".Correct?
Thanks

[Mark Greene_1]

Yes, you need to chown the files to the new user ID. I cannot say if the syntax you provided above is appropriate or not. If, when you are done, the permissions look like they do in other users' directories, you are probably all set.

mark

[navin]

Thanks for the quick reply.
Thanks.

[Paul Sperry]

I'd use usermod to do this.
with the -m and -l options.



-m Move the user's home directory to the
directory specified with the -d option. If
the home directory exists, the directory must
have read and execute permission by group,
where group is the primary group of the
login.



-l new_logname Specifies the new login name for the user.
It consists of a string of printable
characters that does not contain a colon (:)
or a newline (\n).

[kenny chia]

Are you just trying to change his username only?
If so you just need to edit the /etc/passwd file and replace his old username with the new one

[Stuart Carmichael]

I'm going with Kenny on this one - if you rename the users login in /etc/passwd (and presumably change their home directory at the same time) without changing their uid, then you won't need to chown the user's login directory - the uid doesn't change!

The same applies to their group id too.