mjhjmtu

I am currently logged in into a CentOS server and I would like to change my home directory from /home/myuserName/ to /var/www/html/

I tried the below command :

> sudo usermod -d /var/www/html myuserName

But this gives me an error:

usermod: user myUserName is currently logged in

short answer : you can't.

long answer:

HOME dir is set in /etc/passwd, 6th field. It is read upon loggin, your shell is started with this home dir.

The proper way to change home dir for joe is :

• have joe log off.


• use usermod -d /new/home joe to change home dir for subsequent session.

Once session is run, you must do two things:

• edit $HOME to change home dir for session (to be repeated on all active session).


• use sudo vipw to edit home dir for next wession

Also, be aware you might have an issue with permissions/ownship on /var/www/html

The usermod command won't work if you're logged in with the user you are trying to make changes on.

From the manual page on usermod it says:

CAVEATS
usermod will not allow you to change the name of a user who is logged in. You must make certain that the named user is not executing
any processes when this command is being executed if the user's
numerical
user ID is being changed. You must change the owner of any crontab files manually. You must change the owner of any at jobs
manually. You must make any changes involving NIS on the NIS server.

Try logging in with a different user and running the command again.

If that isn't possible then you can manually edit the /etc/passwd file (which is actually what the usermod command is doing). If you do that make sure you back the file up in case you inadvertently do something silly.

You need to edit the /etc/passwd file to change home directory of users that are currently logged in.

Edit the /etc/passwd with sudo vipw and change home directory of the user.

vipw highly recommended other than vim or other editors since vipw will set lock to prevent any data corruption.

A couple possible workarounds, depending on what you're hoping to solve:

Option 1. Add HOME=/var/www/html to your .bashrc

Option 2. Rename /home/myusername and then create a symlink to the desired directory.

mv /home/myusername /home/myusername-old
ln -s /var/www/html /home/myusername

You can only do this temporarily. This means that every time you login as that user you have to run this one command:

export HOME=/var/www/html

This way, you can make most applications think that your home directory is whatever location you use above.

~ will also start to point to /var/www/html.

The applications this worked with for me were NPM and Maven.