cd ~homedir not working

[Allanm]

For sometime now, I am unable to do -

cd ~homedir
but
cd /homedir works...

Can you suggest some pointers as to how I can troubleshoot or fix this?

Thanks,
Allan.

[Allanm]

Also sudo bash takes a very long time to come back to the password prompt...

[Steven Schweda]

> cd ~homedir

If you want "/homedir", then say "/homedir".
The "~user_name" notation is used with a user
name. That path to that user's home
directory is obtained from the "passwd" data
base ("/etc/passwd", or wherever). Unless
there's a user name of "homedir", "~homedir"
makes no sense.

What is the user name here?

Where is that user's home directory?

[Allanm]

Sorry I meant cd ~user-home-dir, cd /user-home-dir works.

Also sudo bash is very slow to respond...

[Steven Schweda]

> Sorry I meant cd ~user-home-dir,
> cd /user-home-dir works.

So, does that mean that you're happy, or is
there still a problem/question there?

> Also sudo bash is very slow to respond...

A different thread with "sudo" in the Subject
might get more attention from people who know
more about sudo than I.

[Goran Koruga]

Hi.

Did you check which is the homedir set for your user?

getent passwd

Next to last field is homedir.

Regards,
Goran

[Kapil Jha]

its ~user_id
if your user id existe and it has home dir.

have you seen some other problem or some specific thing when you not able to do this.
BR,
Kapil+

[Matti_Kurkela]

When you execute "cd ~foo", the shell checks the home directory location of user "foo" from the user database (usually /etc/passwd, but can be NIS or LDAP too if configured) and then moves to that directory.

If the user "foo" has his home directory set as /home/bar, the command "cd ~foo" moves to /home/bar.

Since you say your "cd /homedir" works, it is probably not a home directory permission problem.

Maybe the user cannot look up the home directory location for some reason?
What are the permissions of /, /etc and /etc/passwd?

Please run:

ls -ld / /etc /etc/passwd

The response should be something like this. Note the permissions:
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 2009-10-20 13:30 /
drwxr-xr-x 162 root root 16384 2009-11-03 12:57 /etc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1854 2009-10-06 15:18 /etc/passwd

MK

[dirk dierickx]

normally 'cd ~' will take you to your own home dir. 'cd ~userhomedir' will not work because that would translate to something like /home/user/user, which probably doesn't exist.

if you want to do 'cd ~otheruserhomedir', i'm not aware this is possible. afaik ~ always points to your own home dir and thus you should address others home dirs always as a full path.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] 'cd ~userhomedir' will not work
> because [...]

For a valid explanation of what this means,
see Matti Kurkela's response.

> [...] i'm not aware [...]

Try it?

debi# cd ~
debi# pwd
/root
debi# cd ~ftp
debi# pwd
/home/ftp

debi# grep '^ftp:' /etc/passwd
ftp:x:110:65534::/home/ftp:/bin/false

Or read about it. "man " should
provide the details.

[dirk dierickx]

nice, didn't know about that one yet! is there anything unix can't do? :)