Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 124054
Existing home directory missing in passwd file
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:43 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031021 Description of problem: When creating user foo, the default home directory name /home/foo is displayed, and it gets created unless the default checkmark is removed. However, if one wants to reuse some existing home directory /home/foo, it seems straightforward to remove the checkmark because you do not want to recreate it together with dotfiles, etc. The home directory name /home/foo is still displayed in the corresponding box, and one expects it to be associated with the new user. However, it turns out that the home directory entry in /etc/passwd remains empty in this case which is surely wrong and prevents user foo from logging in. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 1.2.13-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create user foo via system-config-users. 2. Remove checkmark for creation of /home/foo. 3. Accept changes. Actual Results: Error message from GDM when trying to log in because of non-existing home directory. Expected Results: User foo should be able to log in. Additional info: Adding /home/foo manually in /etc/passwd makes everything work correctly.
You should leave the "Create home directory" button checked. I believe that libuser is smart enough not to write over existing dot files. Please file a bug against libuser if you observe dot files getting overwritten. Otherwise, I don't think that the current behavior is a bug. Unchecking the "Create home directory" button means that you do not want a home directory for that user.
I respectfully disagree. If I do not want *any* home directory associated with a newly created user, then I *remove* the /home/foo entry in the system-config-users panel (and the checkmark, too). There is an obvious difference between *creating* and *assigning* a home directory. Removing the checkmark but entering some value for the home directory corresponds to the latter case, leaving the checkmark as well to the former. This appears pretty logical to me. In the case of assigning a home directory no directories/files should be created but-of course-the passwd file should be modified accordingly.