The account `jsmith` must be renamed to `jbrown`, and the home directory must move from /home/jsmith to /home/jbrown with all of its contents. Which single command does both?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks hard
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct usermod -l jbrown -d /home/jbrown -m jsmith
Correct. -l sets the new login name, -d sets the new home directory path, and -m moves the contents of the old home directory to the new location. The final argument is still the current login name.
Not correct usermod -l jbrown -d /home/jbrown jsmith
Wrong, and it leaves a broken account. Without -m the passwd entry points at /home/jbrown, but nothing is moved or created there, so the user logs into a directory that does not exist while their files sit in /home/jsmith.
Not correct usermod -l jbrown -m jsmith
Wrong. -m only moves the home directory to the path given by -d, so without -d there is no new location to move to and the command is rejected. Renaming the login never renames the home directory by itself.
Not correct usermod -n jbrown -d /home/jbrown -m jsmith
Wrong. -n is groupmod's option for renaming a group, not usermod's. The equivalent for a user login is lowercase -l.
Why
Renaming a login changes only the first field of /etc/passwd and the matching key in /etc/shadow and the group files; the home directory path is an independent field and moving it requires -d together with -m. Note what usermod still will not fix: files the user owns elsewhere are found by UID and so remain correct, but anything that referred to the account by name — cron entries, sudoers rules, mail aliases, group lists in other systems — must be updated by hand, and the user must not be logged in while the change is made.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page usermod(8)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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