Account Names at CSE
Can I change my username?
Yes, within limits.All students are allowed to change their username once . This means rather than a fairly random set of letters and numbers, you can select a more relevant/preferred set of letters and numbers.
Undergrad and coursework postgrad students can only change their username to another combination of 4 letters followed by 3 numbers, unless they qualify for a Named Account. The command to change your basic username is priv username and the usage is as follows:
priv username changename NEWNAME
This allows the user to change their username to the given new name (see below for rules). The old user name will be kept as an alias for the account. The new name must fit certain restrictions as given below, and the user must not already have too many aliases.
New usernames are only allowed if they fit certain rules. These rules are checked by /usr/local/lib/check_name.pl. They are:
- The user name must be made of between 3 and 5 lowercase letters followed by at least 3 digits.
- The user name must contain at most 8 characters.
- The letters must come from the start of two or more of your names as recorded in you acc entry. For example, if your name is recorded as "Fred H. Bloggs", then combinations like "frbl", bfred", "fhb", "bhf" are all permitted. There is some allowance for standard abbreviations to be used. For example, if your name was "Robert Edwards", then "bobe" would be allowed. If an abbreviation doesn't work for you, then possibly it hasn't been added to the list of allowed abbreviations. Check /usr/local/lib/nicknames and ask System Support to add it if it isn't there.
Named Accounts
A "named" account means a chosen account name (generally without any numbers in the name).Staff (including tutors), visiting academics, thesis students, postgraduate research students, student representatives and society executives are all eligible for "named" accounts.
The policy on allowed account names is available at the Acceptable Username Policy. Please read it before asking for a name. The most recommended username is "initial of first name, plus full surname", or "full first name, plus initial of surname".
For your convenience, there is also a script which generates valid account names. To see this list, run:
/usr/local/lib/usernames.pl -u $USER
Changing an account name also changes the account home directory name.
Some files inside the account are also changed so they refer to the new home directory path.If someone is logged in or reading email when the account is moved it can have several inconvenient side effects. Most of these won't involve serious file corruption but will cause programs to give odd errors or data to disappear until the next login. You may also lose your most recent mail items.
We recommend that an account owner be logged out during an account name change. When you have selected a new account name and a time to change to it, email that information to System Support and they will make the change.
Notes about changed username
When your account name is changed, your old account name is usually retained as an alias. Thus, mail delivered to the old address will be automatically forwarded to the new one. Similarly, the path /home/oldusername will continue to work, as will relevant web URLs (you should try to change them over time though).If you had any Mail Aliases based on your old username (e.g. oldname.something), you will not be able to edit this with a normal mlalias command. To access the old aliases, you must also give the -u old_username argument to mlalias. For example, to delete an old alias called "fblg123.group":
mlalias -u fblg123 -R fblg123.group
Renaming legacy accounts
Some old student accounts include the student number in the username. These are now rare since student numbers are no longer publically recorded. This section pertains to renaming those accounts using the priv username command.- priv username newhome
If the user's home directory currently ends with their student number, this command can be used to change the home directory to end with the user's current username. - priv username no-stuid
Once a student has chosen a new username and changed their home directory name, they can remove (almost) all record of their student id from their account. This no-stuid command removes the student number alias, and the student number field from the acc entry. It is still possible for staff find out the user's student number using priv upi.