topic Re: useradd fails in Operating System - HP-UX

useradd fails

Brad Marks — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:11:05 GMT

When I execute this command:
useradd -g users -d /home/users -s /bin/sh -c test x.xxx
I get this error:
'/home/users' is not a valid directory

What could be invalid about /home/users?

Thanks,
Brad

Re: useradd fails

Jeff Schussele — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:13:18 GMT

Hi Brad,

Does it exist prior to the command?
If not then you need a -m to "make" it.

HTH,
Jeff

Re: useradd fails

Brad Marks — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:17:18 GMT

Jeff,
Yes it does.
Further, I found that if i add a trailing "/"; making it "-d /home/users/" it works, except the ownership of /home/users changes from root:sys to the user being added (in this case x.xxx:users)!?

Re: useradd fails

hari jayaram_1 — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:18:40 GMT

Hi,

I just tried that on a test server and it works perfectly fine. I had to later create the directory. Please advice if the directory is already there and also if you are doing it with sufficient priveleges.

Thanks

Re: useradd fails

Sundar_7 — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:20:07 GMT

I dont believe you will get an invalid directory message even if the directory exists already.

Re: useradd fails

Jeff Schussele — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:25:24 GMT

OK - what is the ownership & perms of /home?
A clueless admin doing chown username:groupname .* inside a user's home dir can change the ownership of /home& that can result in these symptoms.

Rgds,
Jeff

Re: useradd fails

Brad Marks — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:26:30 GMT

The /home/users directory already exists:
drwxrwxrwx 2 root users 96 May 10 16:07 .
drwxrwxrwx 32 root root 1024 May 4 11:18 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root users 893 May 10 13:42 .profile

Re: useradd fails

Jairo Campana — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:27:53 GMT

useradd -g users -d /home/users -s /bin/sh -c test x.xxx

error '/home/users' is not a valid directory
the comamd some times the directory does not create

in my case

made mkdiir /home/users or option:

-m Creates the home directory for the new login if it
does not exist. If the home directory exists, the
directory must have read and execute permission by
group, where group is the primary group of the new
login.

Re: useradd fails

Brad Marks — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:36:03 GMT

It seems that the group ownership of /home/users needs to be 'users'.
This fixed it.

Thanks to all!
Brad

Re: useradd fails

Bill Hassell — Mon, 10 May 2004 21:19:14 GMT

The permissions on /home and /home/users are very wrong. They should be 755 (drwxr-xr-x). Do you have umask set? If not, you will have to fix all the directories and files created since the original installation. umask is critical for the root user and should be 022 or even 077.