PaperCut KB | Renaming user accounts

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Renaming user accounts

I have renamed my users in the directory (e.g. in Active Directory). How do I also rename my accounts in PaperCut?

PaperCut uses the username as the primary user identifier. In effect it's the primary key in the database. Hence PaperCut treats renaming an Active Directory user account as a brand new account. It's equivalent to deleting the old account and adding a new account. Due to limitations in the Windows API, it's not possible for us to use things like SAM account UIDs to identify accounts and hence we can't support automatic renaming.

PaperCut does however provide some advanced scripting tools that can be used to manage account renaming. The server-command program can be used either directly, or in a script to manually facilitate account renaming. The procedure is as follows:

1. Re-name the account in Active Directory.

2. Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) on the server running PaperCut and type:

            cd c:\Program Files\PaperCut NG\server\bin\win
            server-command rename-user "<old_username>" "<new_username>"

Note: Take care to make sure the old and new names are typed correctly.

3. The user account should now appear in PaperCut with the new name and all historic print history, credit, print quotas and transaction audit logs should be carried over to the new name.

The same procedure may be used on Linux, Novell or Mac server systems. The path to server-command will however vary depending on the platform.

Advanced network/system administrators may wish to use server-command directly in a rename-user script or batch file. For example, this single script would rename the user in AD, PaperCut and any other database/system around the organization all in one go.

Categories: Users, Administration

Keywords: re-naming, re-name, editing user accounts