Hello again mldvx4,

I was thinking exactly like this. That your script will do something like that.

Well an alternative solution would be to remove the user Linux::usermod->del(username); (I assume the module removes the user from all groups) and after that create a new user Linux::usermod->add(username, password, uid, gid, comment, home, shell); with the updated name. That could be a workaround (assuming there are no errors on this one as well). Not to forget you can assign the user to the desired groups

@users = qw(user1 user2 user3);
Linux::usermod->grpadd(groupname, gid, "@users")
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Let us know at the end what solution you came up with. BR / Thanos

Thanks. I gave Linux::usermod->del(username); a try and see that it leaves the groups in /etc/group and /etc/shadow untouched instead of removing / modifying them as needed. I took a look at the source for Linux::usermod and it's over my skill level to dig in and form a patch, at least in a timely manner.

I'll look into several options now but it may take some time.

It looks like this is the distilled version of what I will try. The validation of the two variables takes place earlier in another function.

$ENV{'PATH'}=q(/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin);

my ($um,$gm);

qx/usermod --login $newname --home $newname $oldname/;
$um = $?;
if ($um==0) {
    qx/groupmod --new-name $newname $oldname/;
    $gm = $?;
}
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Ideas or corrections?

No output is produced, so I don't try to capture any. And the home directory gets reassigned and renamed elsewhere, too, since I have a little non-standard home directory arrangement for those groups.

Since you're setting a restricted PATH, are you running this under taint mode? If so, are $newname and $oldname user input? If yes, I would strongly recommend against putting them in a shell command like this (even though I assume you had to untaint them first). I'd suggest at the very least using system in the list form with more than one argument, e.g.:

system('usermod','--login',$newname,'--home',$newname,$oldname)
    ==0 or die "usermod failed, \$?=$?";
system('groupmod','--new-name',$newname,$oldname)
    ==0 or die "groupmod failed, \$?=$?";
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I wrote more on the topic of avoiding the shell here.

If you don't need the output, use system instead of qx. It returns the exit code directly, so no need to use $?.
map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]