Migrate to a new user home
I’ve had multiple issues with the configuration of the current user. Under a new user account these are solved. Now I want to move (not copy, because of disk space) all data from the old user to the new user. I also want to selectively move some of the unproblematic application setting files over to the new user.
To do this, How can I make the entire user folder of the old user read and writable for the new user?
Change the ownership of the home directory using chown to the new user.
chown -R newuser:newuser /home/olduser
I’m going to guess that the "multiple issues" are actually related to application specific configuration. A vanilla account shouldn’t have anything that depends on the location of the home directory.
The problem you’re describing though is difficult to resolve without carrying across any issues. Copying non-"dot" files, along with the standard shell startup files might be a good start, but it’s still possible you’ll either miss important dot files or carry across too much. It’s going to have to be a bit of a trial and error solution.
Let’s assume you’ve already created the new account. For convenience I shall use variables to identify the old and new user directories. Perform all this as root:
olduser=olduser # For example, « olduser=sarah »
newuser=newuser
oldgroup=oldgroup # For example, « oldgroup=sarah » or « oldgroup=users »
newgroup=newgroup
oldhome=/home/olduser # For example, « oldhome=/home/sarah »
newhome=/home/newuser
Move files from the old directory to the new:
mv "$oldhome"/* "$newhome/"
mv -f "$oldhome"/.{bashrc,bash_profile,profile,ssh} "$newhome/"
Review the remaining files, and move (mv) those you want to keep:
ls -RA "$oldhome"
Finally, change the ownership and group for the new user:
find "$newhome" -user "$olduser" -exec chown "$newuser" {} +
find "$newhome" -group "$oldgroup" -exec chgrp "$newgroup" {} +