when I moved between users transferring /home/name to /home/other so I could have more space on first login name, had result of losing access to that [main automatic] user.
When try login get message 'no directory /home/name' logging in with home = "/"
used su & mkdir to get directory '/home/name' but it still doesn't come up, and keep getting message that need to configure kstartupconfig, but when try get message 'no such file or directory'.
I know that the user data is still there somewhere, but no way to get at it.

Maybe... but you need to tell us just how you "transferred" /home/name to /home/other...

If you "moved" the directory then you just need to (as root) chown -R other /home/other so that the "other" user will now own all those files, but any absolute paths inside configs in that directory will not work.

If you deleted the user "name" first, then it is possible that that the home directory was also deleted... in which case...

So please provide a little more info about

1. What exactly you are trying to accomplish
2. What you have done to that end, how you transferred the directory and how you created and/or deleted any users

You should not have moved anything, you should have copied it. Copy it back, so that you have the necessary files in both locations.

The problem with copying it back is that the location and user [original startup location for root] no longer is there -- and NO I did not delete ANYTHING.
I tried the 'chown -R other /home/other' and got a long roll of transferring accompanied by ending of denied access.
So did a su and tried again, and switched so had transferring ownership to /home/name [original login user] and only got [until switched back] that couldn't access those files since under 'name/wiliam' and not 'other/bil', and can ONLY LOGIN AS BIL/other. The original user is still in files and login options, but can never actually get in there.
Nothing has gotten me back to original user files.
What I specifically did was: mv -R /home/wiliam /home/bil

Believe answer may lie with message to fix 'kstartupconfig' which no amount of searching has found [I keep getting no-such-file-or-directory].
Trying to login with /home/wiliam just gets 'no directory /home/wiliam' logging in with home = "/".
Thanks for your patience.

If the name of the user that does not work is wiliam, run the commands:
EDIT: had to correct the chown command. The first version was incomplete - my apologies...

Well, it is not a matter of "getting back" those original files. It is mostly a matter of changing the ownership of those files, if they still exist, to the new user.

Please read my previous post as it most likely covers everything you mention here.

First...

If you do that as root then you will not get permission denied errors.

And if the original user is no longer there, then you did delete the original user. And if the original location is no longer there then it is a trivial and ordinary operation to recreate it... again as root:

There. All done. If the wiliam user still exists and none of those files have been changed in the meantime, then you should be able to just login as wiliam normally.

Also, as for the no-such-file-or-directory message, that most likely results from the fact that the directory has been moved or deleted. If your user still exists (if you did not use userdel to remove it) and once you have copied the original files to their original location, it should work. If it does not then we need to identify the individual caues(s) of that and handle them one at a time.

Trying things without knowing what will happen as a result will only dig a deeper hole.

You continue to use the word "transferring" as if that has some meaning in this context... it really does not. Maybe I am missing something, but could you please explain exactly what you mean by that each time that you use it - or think more carefully about what you are trying to describe.

Home directory is set in /etc/passwd, use proper editor to change it, vipw works for me in Gentoo.

Checked password with vi and no problem there as everything is in order [wiliam:x:1000:100:wiliam v-w:/home/wiliam:/bin/bash bil:x:1001:etc]; but still boot-up goes directly to user bil with comment to check install due to problem with kstartupconfig -- where I'll do more checking.
P.S. I knew at time it was dumb to do this, but thought I could get everything into bil and then have only one item to return from desktop to wiliam -- tried to save time,ha,ha.

that's a nice mess.

if you hadn't done anything yet, this is what i'd have recommended:

• boot into recovery mode
• copy the directory /home/william to its new location, making sure it keeps its user/priveleges
• rename the old /home/william
• create a symlink from /newhome/william to /home/william
• reboot

also, you should have told us what distro you're using and which app (login manager?) is spitting out the errors in the first place.

Tried a solution found on old 10.1 opensuse forum entry: chown -R wiliam:users /home/wiliam
Worked perfectly as now automatically boots into /home/wiliam; just needed to add-in some additional files.
Thanks everyone for your efforts.