[Novalug] Recover a dummy user?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 09:22 -0700, Beartooth wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Kevin Cole wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:57, Beartooth <karhunhammas at lserv.com> wrote:
>  	[...]
> >>        Is there an easy way to keep those things, too, or will
> >> it be less bother just to do it all over? (If only FEBE worked
> >> for all browsers ...)
> >
> > Although, if I recall, there may be a few "edge cases", the 
> > easier(?) thing to do is login as root and edit /etc/passwd, 
> > /etc/shadow and /etc/group. Change "user" to "btth" in each.
> >
> > Then rename /home/user to /home/btth, and finally either 
> > "passwd btth" as root, or login as btth using the trivial 
> > password and do a "passwd" and "upgrade" your password.
> >
> > In a nutshell, using perl because I'm not sure exactly how to 
> > do it in sed...
> >
> > perl -p -i -e "s|user|btth|g;" /etc/passwd
> > perl -p -i -e "s|user|btth|g;" /etc/shadow
> > perl -p -i -e "s|user|btth|g;" /etc/group
> > mv /home/user /home/btth
> > passwd btth
> >
> > "user" is currently associated with a particular numeric user 
> > id and a numeric group id.  The above just changes the name of 
> > the user that is associated with that number.  There are a few 
> > other places deep in the bowels of various apps that may 
> > remember "user" as a name but as I recall they were easily 
> > remedied as the need arose, and very rare.
> >
> > But you may want to wait for a second opinion on the advice 
> > above. (It's worked okay for me in the past, but perhaps I was 
> > playing with fire.)
> 
>  	Hmmm ... I can do most of that, a line at a time, with 
> "nano -w" afaict; I've never touched any serious editor, sed nor 
> vi nor perl (which I take it you're using, in effect, as an 
> editor here). I can certainly c&p; the question then would 
> become, I suppose, whether I have enough of perl installed.

The sed way is to get rid of the -p, get rid of the semi-colons, and
change the | inside the "" to /

-- 
Mackenzie Morgan
http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com
apt-get moo
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