[Samba] changing a user's name.

[John Drescher]

On 8/15/07, Adam Williams <awilliam at mdah.state.ms.us> wrote:
> I'm running Samba 3.0.24 on CentOS 5.0 w/ smbpasswd password database
> and roaming profiles.  A user (running XP w/ SP2) recently got married
> and has a new last name.  So, I need to change her username from bkearny
> to btalbot.  In the past I've just changed their name in
> /etc/samba/smbpasswd and moved /var/lib/samba/profiles/old_username to
> new_username and changed ownership of the files (chown -R new_username
> /var/lib/samba/profiles/new_username) and also done the same with their
> net login script (change to new name and change ownership of it).  This
> has caused problems when they get a new PC or format and reinstall of XP
> on their existing PC.  The problems are what I think are registry
> permission errors.  For instance, My Documents fold redirection doesn't
> work (which is a change in the registry to their new folder location),
> unable to change desktop settings, etc.  I think what is happing is that
> HKEY_USERS is still owned by DOMAIN\old_username and I need to add full
> control to DOMAIN\new_username before moving them to the new username
> account.
>
> Is my thinking correct and has anyone else had this problem?
> --
When I make windows usernames share the same profile I do this with
regedit. Login as an admin. Use regedit to load their hive (this is in
the file menu). Then right click on the place where you loaded (I
usually do this under HKEY_USERS) and add full control to the new
user.

John