[fheyligh]

Please help me. It's an iMac G5 1.8 17" 1.256 Gb

I was importing some music fromflash drive (about a gB) when i foolisly decided to change the name of my Home Folder whilst i was importing the music from flash drive to External hard drive.

The system crashed and i was faced with the beachball of death for 20 minutes.. I was forced to relaunch Finder. When i did so i though everything was ok, but i noticed that the hghlight selection had changed from Graphite to blue, i went to change that back and then noticed that once i had done, my desktop image had changed back to standard. I went to change that back but found that all the pictures in iPhoto had vanished (this was the start of my troubles)

I've tried repairing disc permissions 4 times, restarted , shut down, nothing is restored.

I'm only now realising how many changes i had made to the system, for instance, the mouse cursor is a lot less sensative and i've just noticed my entire iTunes library has dissapeared.

What can i do, please help me

[CatOne]

Change the name of your home folder back. That's really the only solution. If your login id (shortname) and your home folder don't match, you're totally screwed. But you should be able to recover if you just change it back (if necessary, drop to terminal, and do it via sudo).

Once you've done that, IMMEDIATELY reboot. In fact, don't even use the shutdown menu. Type reboot from the command prompt.

Should be okay after that.

[fheyligh]

Thankyou!! yeah thats pretty much how i did it.. I've been frantically posting on forums cos i thought i'd really screwed the machine i was caking it.. And this was thrown at me on Apple Support..

Thanks mate

Problem solved.... This is how i solved it. THANKS EVERYONE!!!!


http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

[Tomchu]

Yeah, all those effects you're seeing are just OS X/various applications not being able to find their preferences anymore, and just creating new ones with defaults.

You haven't lost anything -- no worries. Just follow the advice up top.

[Chuckit]

Kind of disappointing that Apple hasn't guarded against this.

[jmiddel]

How can Apple possibly guard us from all the bizarre things people come up with? Lase has already acknowledged that his/her action was foolish, seems to be new at this so this is how one learns the ropes. Took less than an hour. Good for Lase!

[Chuckit]

This is hardly an unforeseeable case. I know lots of people who have wanted to do it, and I've always advised them not to because I was worried Apple might not have properly prepared for it — clearly I was right.

Really, I don't see anything bizarre about wanting to change the name of your home folder. How is that any more weird than wanting to change the name of a hard disk? The user should be free to experiment without running into any strange, unstated system requirements. You could rename things to your heart's content in OS 9, and the few things that you couldn't, the system would warn you about.

[greenamp]

i agree with Chuckit. A simple prompt advising users what is about to happen would most likely suffice.

[analogika]

Agreed.

I've seen this happen on customers' machines a couple of times.

Along with the I'm-a-graphic-designer-and-ain't-nobody-gonna-tell-me-what-I-can-or-can't-do-with-my-machine types who'll move their home folder up to the top level of the hard drive or move the System and Library folders off to a single directory to keep them from cluttering up the hard drive.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

You could rename things to your heart's content in OS 9, and the few things that you couldn't, the system would warn you about.

You COULD, however, move stuff around, making your system unbootable in the process, without the slightest warning.

Also, I'm quite sure you would not be warned if you try to rename the "Preferences" folder within the System Folder, which would result in many of the same symptoms as renaming the home folder.

[eeeaa]

Originally Posted by jmiddel

How can Apple possibly guard us from all the bizarre things people come up with? Lase has already acknowledged that his/her action was foolish, seems to be new at this so this is how one learns the ropes. Took less than an hour. Good for Lase!

I'd hardly call this a bizarre thing. It's obvious that someone will attempt to change the name of their home folder. Though they should not do it (obviously), Apple should guard against it, if only to cut down on the walk-in support to the Apple stores just a little. I'm sure there are many novice users who have attempted this before.

[production_coordinator]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

The user should be free to experiment without running into any strange, unstated system requirements. You could rename things to your heart's content in OS 9, and the few things that you couldn't, the system would warn you about.

Ummm, OS 9 was a nightmare at times. Just FINDING an application on someone's computer could be a frustrating search. And if someone moved the wrong file... you had a ticking time bomb. The system would continue to run just fine... until a reboot. And unless you knew exactly what you (or the person) had moved... a reinstall was basically your only "fix".

I really resisted the naming convention of OS X, but I've since embraced it... and only wish more people would follow the OS X style.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by production_coordinator

Ummm, OS 9 was a nightmare at times. Just FINDING an application on someone's computer could be a frustrating search. And if someone moved the wrong file... you had a ticking time bomb. The system would continue to run just fine... until a reboot. And unless you knew exactly what you (or the person) had moved... a reinstall was basically your only "fix".

That's not really true - there were only a few files that would cause the system not to boot if they were moved, and if any one of those files wasn't present on restart/shutdown, the OS would pop up a warning saying that the file wasn't in its proper place and that you wouldn't be able to boot again if you restarted now.

[slugslugslug]

Originally Posted by jmiddel

How can Apple possibly guard us from all the bizarre things people come up with? Lase has already acknowledged that his/her action was foolish, seems to be new at this so this is how one learns the ropes. Took less than an hour. Good for Lase!

One should not have to learn the ropes by doing something that is guaranteed to cause problems and getting no warning. The Finder is just a front end to the file system, and if it's gonna pretty up certain things for the user (hidden filename extensions, invisibility of dot files), it may as well also prevent them from making mistakes with potentially harmful consequences..

[red rocket]

I find that the short username looks out of place in the Finder sidebar, wanting to change the name of the Home folder seems pretty natural to me.

[MacManMikeOSX]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

That's not really true - there were only a few files that would cause the system not to boot if they were moved, and if any one of those files wasn't present on restart/shutdown, the OS would pop up a warning saying that the file wasn't in its proper place and that you wouldn't be able to boot again if you restarted now.

And OS9 ALWAYS warned you before you moved a system or finder file, if you made your machine unbootable you had to be a complete idiot.

[DeathMan]

I've often wanted to change my short username. Due to a bit of Linux experience, I knew it was a bad idea, but I wouldn't mind being able to do it.

[MacManMikeOSX]

Originally Posted by DeathMan

I've often wanted to change my short username. Due to a bit of Linux experience, I knew it was a bad idea, but I wouldn't mind being able to do it.

Oh you can change it, just have fun with netinfo and permissions. Although it actually is easier because of netinfo than in Linux.

[kleinemans]

i had this same issue a few months ago when i was trying to improve the looks of my GUI.
simple logic: whenever anyone comes across a problem (particularly in software), always trace back to the steps you took to get to that problem in the first place, and redo them

[David Thompson]

You could just edit the login directory using Netinfo Manager in Applications/Utilities. This is how I changed my login directory to another HD. Works great!

[slugslugslug]

There's a GUI tool to change a short username, available here (click "ChangeShortName" on the left side of the page). Apparently it works, though its readme is so loaded with warnings that I've been scared to try it, even for my GF's username on the secondary computer. But I'm sure cloning one's boot drive before using ChangeShortName is sufficient insurance against disaster..

[chabig]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Kind of disappointing that Apple hasn't guarded against this.

Apple DID guard against this--sort of. The Finder won't rename the home folder if you are logged into a non-admin account, which is how you really ought to be running anyway. But I do agree that a dialog would nice to warn admin users of the consequences.

Chris

[blikum]

Originally Posted by slugslugslug

There's a GUI tool to change a short username, available here (click "ChangeShortName" on the left side of the page). Apparently it works, though its readme is so loaded with warnings that I've been scared to try it, even for my GF's username on the secondary computer. But I'm sure cloning one's boot drive before using ChangeShortName is sufficient insurance against disaster..

This does work. I've used it on clients machines and my own.

[slugslugslug]

Originally Posted by chabig

Apple DID guard against this--sort of. The Finder won't rename the home folder if you are logged into a non-admin account, which is how you really ought to be running anyway. But I do agree that a dialog would nice to warn admin users of the consequences.

Chris

People who buy a computer with the intention of being the only person to use it aren't going to set up more than one account unless the setup assistant forces them to. I don't think it makes sense to do so. Apple should just assume that people who don't know the consequences of changing home folder names will end up as admins and make the Finder warn everyone against doing so.

[Targon]

Well i think this could possibly unavoidable if Apple made the installation stage clearly understandable.

Registration should be a separate entity to account creation. Details Real Name First-Last should be just that and have no influence on anything else. The installer should then take the user to the next phase of creating a name for the computer and a name for the user witch is the SAME as the users login name.

For Setting up the computer including the first account the following should be provided.

Computer Name
User Name (this name is used as login name and is the same used for as the users home folder)
Password

I think it confuses the hell out of ppl with the current 'Real Name First and Last, Short Name, Long Name' text entry fields. When you get to the desktop you realize the name of the computer is something you don't want an the name of your home folder is not what you expected.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by analogika

You COULD, however, move stuff around, making your system unbootable in the process, without the slightest warning.

Also, I'm quite sure you would not be warned if you try to rename the "Preferences" folder within the System Folder, which would result in many of the same symptoms as renaming the home folder.

i actually renamed my os x system folder in os 9 to systemm and i booted to os x and it paniced. (i wasnt experimenting, i accidently did an arc + install without knowing i could boot back to the arced system folder)

[mdc]

To get around the short username thing I created a new user with the username and short username I wanted and then moved everything out of my 'old' home folder into the 'new' one and then deleted the old user account.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by jmiddel

How can Apple possibly guard us from all the bizarre things people come up with?

Huh? Who said anything about "all bizarre things"?

Renaming a user folder shouldn't be so easily permitted...
if the results are going to be so drastic. (Think of new users,
children, clueless grandparents, etc). Note how nigh impossible
changing the 'short' username is.

Apple could so easily prevent (or severely discourage) this,
it's not even funny.

Originally Posted by jmiddel

Lase has already acknowledged that his/her action was foolish

Right... and that "acknowledgment" was his/her only foolish action, IMHO.

[Salty]

Honestly I don't know why Apple doesn't just require a password for it, with a warning saying this can lead to loss of data or confusion of data or something, and then let the user mess up their computer if they want. Quite frankly each home folder it would make more sense to be owned by system would it not? Then you'd HAVE to at least understand permissions to mess with it.

[zmcgill]

Originally Posted by mdc

To get around the short username thing I created a new user with the username and short username I wanted and then moved everything out of my 'old' home folder into the 'new' one and then deleted the old user account.

I've done this a couple times, how'd you deal with permissions problems?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Gossamer

I've done this a couple times, how'd you deal with permissions problems?

Use chown to change the ownership on the whole thing, recursively

sudo chown -R <newusername> <homefoldername>

*done*

[cambro]

Originally Posted by Salty

Honestly I don't know why Apple doesn't just require a password for it, with a warning saying this can lead to loss of data or confusion of data or something, and then let the user mess up their computer if they want. Quite frankly each home folder it would make more sense to be owned by system would it not? Then you'd HAVE to at least understand permissions to mess with it.

I agree. Apple really needs to at least provide a warning dialogue if there is an attempt to rename the home directory via the GUI.

The probability of an average user knowing that this is not a good idea is low but the probability of them wanting to do it is very high.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Salty

Quite frankly each home folder it would make more sense to be owned by system would it not?

Not really. It doesn't make sense to give the user a home folder he can't modify. Plus it would break the default configuration of a lot of OSS.