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Bug 300016 - Create user fails without warning if home directory for user already exists
Create user fails without warning if home directory for user already exists
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-system-tools
Classification: Deprecated
Component: users-admin
1.4.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Carlos Garnacho
Carlos Garnacho
: 338117 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-04-09 20:20 UTC by Gustavo Carneiro
Modified: 2008-01-08 01:12 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Gustavo Carneiro 2005-04-09 20:20:30 UTC
Distribution/Version: Ubuntu hoary

Imagine you have an old account lying around in the /home partition, /home/foo.
 Now, from a previous instalation, foo had some random uid, thus /home/foo is
owned by this random uid.

Now go create user foo (in a lazy attempt to reactivate the account).  All looks
fine, except that the home directory for foo, /home/foo, is not touched, and no
warning is given.  If you try to login as foo, obviously this fails since foo
can't create files in his own directory.

This is not nice.  At least a warning should be given that the home dir for the
user already exists.  Option to "chown" the dir would be a nice bonus.
Comment 1 Allison Karlitskaya (desrt) 2005-04-10 01:34:54 UTC
Or an option to create a new directory, /home/foo2 (foo3, foo4... and so on) for
user "foo" if the original directory isn't available.  Again, warning would be nice.
Comment 2 Christian Kirbach 2006-01-07 16:43:56 UTC
<josep> I can confirm a bug #300016 in gst
Comment 3 Sebastian Breier 2006-12-17 20:54:10 UTC
Also happens if the group already exists.

Steps:
1. sudo addgroup test
2. Create user "test" in users-admin

=> User not created
Comment 5 Sebastian Breier 2007-02-15 13:35:37 UTC
The Ubuntu bug (existing group) got fixed, u-a now reuses gids. The home directory problem persists though.
Comment 6 Carlos Garnacho 2008-01-02 21:45:55 UTC
This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.
Comment 7 Carlos Garnacho 2008-01-08 01:12:18 UTC
*** Bug 338117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***