Re: Safe change of uid

["Elmer E. Dow" <elmeredow@att.net>]

Alex Samad wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 05:29:04PM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
>   
> > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 08:54:47AM -0500, Elmer E. Dow wrote:
> >     
> > > Just finished a fresh Lenny install and added an account for my daughter  
> > > -- and kuser assigned it uid 500 instead of 1001, which I must correct.  
> > > After looking at man pages and archives, I see that kuser in the past  
> > > has done well creating accounts but not modifying them. Is that still  
> > > true with the version used in Lenny? Is usermod a better option for  
> > > dealing with this situation or would deleting and recreating the account  
> > > -- either using kuser or userdel -- be the simplest and best method?
> > >
> > > Please cc me as I am not currently subscribing to the list.
> > >
> > >       
> > Since you only just created the user, I'd just go ahead and delete it
> > (use:
> > # cd /var/tmp
> > # deluser --remove-all-files --backup
> >
> > then use adduser to create the new user
> >
> > To be safe, I'd then examine the backup tarball to ensure that nothing
> > was removed accidentally, before deleting the tarball.
> >
> > I've never used (or heard of) kuser to know why it created uid 500.
> >     
>
> I usually (rightly or wrongly) vim /etc/passwd, then find / -uid 500 -exec
> chmod 1000 "{}" \; and maybe the same if I have to change the gid.
>
>
>
>   
> > Doug.
> >
> >
> >     
>
>   
Let me see if I understand this correctly. Here's what it appears to me 
that I should do.

First I"ll use vipw to edit  /etc/passwd  and vipw -s to edit the  
shadowfile to change the uid.
Then edit with vigr and vigr -s  /etc/group and the shadow file  to 
change the gid.

Now to change files out in the system:

find / -uid 500  -exec chmod 1000 "{}" \

Find files with a uid of 500 and execute the command chmod to  change 
the uid to 1001 (I'm 1000, so my daughter  will be 1001).

And finally to change the files with a gid of 500 to 1001:

find / -gid 500  -exec chmod 1001 "{}" \

Then I should do usermod -u 1001 <username>
to change the user's uid.

Is order important here?

I'm tempted to try this instead of using deluser.


-Elmer