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Created a new user in Ubuntu 11.04 using

useradd -d /home/dummy -m dummy

Now, after this I set its password using passwd dummy

But, when i login to that user using su - dummy

I get to see No home directory, logging in with HOME=/

cat /etc/passwd | grep dummy shows dummy:x:1001:1001::/home/dummy:/bin/bash

I manually created dir to resolve this issue through mkdir /home/dummy

Now, the error seems to resolve, but I am amazed as to why no files like bash_profile are created in that home directory

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2  
What is the question? – Patrick Apr 15 '12 at 14:56
2  
Do you have anything in /etc/skel? – manatwork Apr 15 '12 at 14:57
2  
@manatwork having anything in /etc/skel wont matter if he created the directory with mkdir. /etc/skel is only used when something like useradd creates it. – Patrick Apr 15 '12 at 15:05
What is the output of useradd -D – fpmurphy Apr 15 '12 at 16:34
-m means the home directory should have been created and populated from /etc/skel. What happens if you create another user? Check what useradd is doing. Are you seeing any message? If you can't find anything, post the output of strace useradd -d /home/test1 -m test1. – Gilles Apr 16 '12 at 0:47

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

You forgot a parameter:

-m, --create-home             create the dummy's home directory

Are you sure you set the correct owner and permission to the directory?

$ ls -ld /home dummy
drwx------ dummy dummy ........... dummy

$ chown dummy:dummy /home/dummy
$ chmod 700 /home/dummy

If you've already files in the directory, add an extra -R to both commands.

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-m is present in the command, look closely. – Mat Apr 15 '12 at 15:41
I stand corrected. – jippie Apr 15 '12 at 15:44
-m is shown in the question, but then OP still had to run mkdir? I think some information is missing. Maybe there was an error. Or maybe OP ran useradd without -m the first time. – Mikel Apr 15 '12 at 16:22
up vote 1 down vote

To avoid such mistakes, you should use the perl script "adduser" that comes with ubuntu. It is a wrapper around useradd that helps you to perform the operation in a wizard style ->[source]...

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Adduser is fine if you want to interactively create users. Does not work for non-interactively creating users, – fpmurphy Apr 15 '12 at 16:33

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