[Solved] Unable to change/create home dir for particular user

UNIX HP-UX
1

Hi all

I wanted to change the home dir for a user, but when using smh :

 SMH->Accounts for Users and Groups->Local Users->Modify User
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Required Field

*Login Name                    :  ictprod____________

User ID                       :  115________________
Allow duplicate User ID       : No ->

Primary Group                 :  users______________
[ Change Primary Group ]

Home Directory                :  /data/ICTPRD/bmd1__
Create Home Directory         : No ->

Start-Up Program Options      :   (X) Select Start-Up Program
                                  ( ) Specify Start-Up Program
Start-Up Program              : /sbin/sh ->

Comments                      :  ___________________
                                (Real Name, Location, Phone, Home Phone)

Password Options              : No Restrictions (Normal Behavior) ->

[ Modify ] [ Preview ] [ Cancel ] [ Help ]

Then when clicking on modify, I got:

'/data/ICTPRD/bmd1' is not a valid directory
Command Unsuccessful
press enter Key to continue

Please can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

FR

2

Does it exist?

3

Yes it does, has got stuff it.

itc01[201]/data/ICTPRD/bmd1 #ls -lrt
total 26
drwxr-xr-x   5 ictprd     ict             96 Mar 17  2011 IBS
drwxr-xr-x   3 ictprd     ict             96 Mar 17  2011 OBS
drwxr-xr-x   2 ictprd     ict             96 Mar 17  2011 SSMFinancialExtract
drwxr-xr-x   2 ictprd     ict             96 Mar 17  2011 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   7 ictprd     ict           1024 Jul 27  2011 rating
drwxr-xr-x   2 root       sys             96 Aug 11  2011 jun11
drwxr-xr-x   2 ictprd     ict           1024 Sep 10 11:17 CdrExtract
drwxr-xr-x   2 ictprd     ict          11264 Sep 11 10:53 FinancialExtract
itc01[202]/data/ICTPRD/bmd1 #
4

What about the perms of the directoriy itself? ( Here we dont see . .. ...)
like

 ll -ld .

What I find suspicious is the lost+found directory here... Is this the mount point of a filesystem?

5

Hi!

I suspect the problem lies in the way the file system layout was configured by the application vendor, which is:

itc01[212]/ #bdf

/dev/vg17/lvol1    115343360 98554200 15763542   86% /data/ICTPRD/bmd1

and "ls -ld"

ls -ld /data/ICTPRD/bmd1
drwxr-xr-x  10 root       root          1024 Aug 11  2011 /data/ICTPRD/bmd1
6

Owner is root for a start...

1 Like
7

Hi !

My silly mistake, sorry...

So there is no way a user other than root can access to that directory (as it is).
But the permission says "other" have "read & execute" rights:

ls -ld bmd1
drwxr-xr-x  10 root       root          1024 Aug 11  2011 bmd1
8

But a home directory should be read write for the owner...
I am not saying its impossible but in that case the behaviour can be unpredictable...
For instance what happens when /home (where user should be by default...) is full?
I varies between cant connect to connected at / which is readonly ( and you have the system defautl profile without history etc...).
What you should do since its a file system:
1) umount the file system, and be sure its set to root as it is now (755) or even better 555 ( but is this a true user or an application UID because some apps dont like at all to be readonly...) then mount the file system and change he owner to the correct user if its an app you would usually use 775 or 771 ... with group to <appgrp>...
This is to prevent in case of file system not present that user connect and fill in the directory ( which is usually on /...) and risk corrupting the whole server's behavious ( I saw some crash...).

1 Like
9

I was told by the app vendor no to mess with permissions on their directories, so they want us to stick with the user they provided.

thanks again