This document describes how to rename a user account on Samba
Situation Definition
When a user leaves an organization some times we want to simply rename their user for the new accout.
This allows the new user to still use the same profile and other configurations that the previous use did. Think of the scenario where there is a need for a unique username; but a role and terminal with high-turnover - such as reception.
If we were continusly creating new accounts each one would need to have their Windows local-system profile configure. That takes an unfortunate amount of time.
Roaming profiles, if they were present could help the situation. However, roaming profiles come with their own set of issues and may not be implemented. This is a situation where simply renaming the user would save loads of time.
Unfortunately, the Samba tools do not come with a rename utility. The solution will be different between using TDB or LDAP back-end.
Renaming Unix User
For smaller installations this will likely be the solution to use.
Firstly we have to rename the user in our UNIX password database. In these examples the "old" username will be alan and the new username will be bill.
First locate the existing UNIX user for Alan, make note of the UID, GID and home directory path.
getent passwd alan alan:x:1101:100::/home/alan:/bin/bash groups alan jessica : users, lp, front
Remove Alan and add Bill with duplicated settings. Then rename the the home directory.
userdel alan useradd --comment "Bill Bass" --home /home/bill --gid 100 -M -u 1101 [ -d /home/alan ] && mv /home/alan /home/bill
One could also directly edit the /etc/passwd files if so desired.
Rename the Samba User
This is operation is similar to above. Collect information about the old user, delete them and then add the new user.
pdbedit -Lv alan Unix username: alan NT username: Account Flags: [U ] User SID: S-1-5-21-296291111-2001118112-231110123-3202 Primary Group SID: S-1-5-21-296291111-2001118112-231110123-513 Full Name: Alan Ardvark Home Directory: \\smb01\users\alan HomeDir Drive: u: Logon Script: Profile Path: Domain: BIG_CO Account desc: Workstations: Munged dial: Logon time: 0 Logoff time: never Kickoff time: never Password last set: Tue, 10 Jan 2010 18:11:42 PST Password can change: Tue, 10 Jan 2010 18:11:42 PST Password must change: never Last bad password : 0 Bad password count : 0 Logon hours : FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Take paticular note of the SID, this is critical!
Delete Alan and add Bill
pdbedit -x alan pdbedit -u bill -U S-1-5-21-296291111-2001118112-231110123-3202
If there was an existing home directory (such as defined above) then that would need to be renamed.