I'm Using Arch Linux + Xfce4 (Edit: running as VBox OS guest) and I wanted to change a username and it's home directory accordingly. I followed these steps as root:
1.Renamed the home directory
# mv /home/oldusername /home/newusername
2.Changed user's login name and home directory:
# usermod -l newusername oldusername
# usermod -d /home/newusername newusername
3.Changed user's default group name
# groupmod -n newgroupname oldgroupname
All that went fine, I could log in as newusername and check that the env variables $USER, $HOME are ok.
But when I run "startx", the X session does not start. Then I shutdown the system and as root again I rename the home directory back to /home/oldusername. Then I login as newusername and this time startx succeeds. Why is that? only the dirname is changing, all other files (.xinitrc, etc.) are the same..
grep oldusername .xinitrc
holds any results? – Rui F Ribeiro Jan 10 '16 at 13:01