HELP! Tried to change Admin's short name! GONE WRONG!

Boot from the CD and enable the root user. Boot from the hd, login as root, make your changes, and then disable root.

 

The problem is that when you changed your short user name, you were no longer a member of the admin group. The default configuration of MacOS X allows only two user classes to execute commands with elevated permissions: root, and any member of the admin group.

By changing your short username first without adding it to the list of admin users, you effectively turned your account into a non-privileged one.

 

I've tried to do this myself, why did Apple make it so complicated.

 

this sort of "complications" has kept UNIX as one of the best and most secure multi-user OSes for decades.

short names are login names with accounts. they aren't just "names" to be changed as you feel like it - different names mean different accounts, with each account having unique priviledges. sure, you own the computer so as far as you are concerned, all the accounts you make should just correspond to you - but as far as OS X is concerned, granting different accounts the same access priviledge is no different than granting some remote hacker the priviledge. short names shouldn't be chosen lightly...

 

Apple didn't make it complicated, UNIX did. This is one of the penalties for UNIX security and stability. You may or may not ba able to fix your situation. Enable ROOT and try to fix the NetInfo DBase.

The RIGHT way to do this is to create a New Admin user with the new name you want. reboot into this new user and transfer the user folder to the new user. THEN delete the original user.

 

I successfully changed my shortname. If you had searched Apple's KB it would have given you a step-by-step process. Basically you do a chown on all the files that you created in the old account. I forget the flags though.