I tried changing my username on my Arch Linux install but somewhat caused a problem. I did the usual usermod -l newlogin oldlogin and renamed my HOME directory. I followed the instructions from this page.

I tried logging in with the new username but for some reason, it wasn't logging me in. I was not able to spot any "useful information" in the logs - auth.log and user.log.

Someone advised me to login from the root shell by calling the command login. This then gave me the error message. I obviously didn't change my HOME directory correctly as it was pointing to /home/old_login and goes to / as it can't find the directory (since I've moved it :bigsmile:). I misunderstood the statement below:

...In particular, the user's home directory name should probably be changed to reflect the new login name.

So I guess the way to change the username and renaming the HOME directory would be usermod -l newlogin -d /home/newlogin/ -m old_login. I gotta read the man pages more. :D