Missing home directory?

[pghohnst]

I'm brand new to any form of Linux, and trying to take over managing a server that's running Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.

Supposedly, the person who used to manage the server set up an admin account before they left, but when I try to log in to it I get the error:

Your home directory is listed as:
'/home/username'
but it does not appear to exist. Do you want to log in with the / (root) directory as your home directory?

It is unlikely anything will work unless you use a failsafe session.


I've browsed a couple other topics with similar problems and tried some of what was suggested, but I haven't gotten anywhere.

Any ideas on what I can do to fix this? Thanks in advance!

[meton_magis]

on linux, there is only 1 admin account, that is root. You can have other accounts that have permission to run processes as root (using sudo,) but only ever 1 admin account.

If you don't know root's password, you can google for single user mode, or linux root password reset and figure out how to reset it. Then just create your own userID to log in with.

[Rubberman]

The error you are getting means that the password was correct, but that the default user account home directory is missing. Affirm to login to the / (root) directory and see if you get in. Then, if this is an admin account, you should be able to switch to root (if you don't know the password to login that way, with the command sudo su - which will get you in as root provided your "admin" account really is an admin (sudoer) account. If that gets you to root status, then you can change root's password with the passwd command. Anyway, try all this and let us know how you fare. If you still run into roadblocks, then we'll take it from there.

[pghohnst]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Rubberman, if I affirm, in the default session, it won't let me in.
If I affirm with the session changed to a failsafe terminal, I get to the terminal I get the message:

User's $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User's $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users.

From there it lets me into the terminal. Then I'm able to get to root using the sudo command, and it will let me change the password for root.


meton_magis, I tried creating a new user account. It ended up giving me the same error that I was originally getting for the account I was trying to log into before.

[HROAdmin26]

Boot off a recovery CD or some other Live CD/USB and mount the root filesystem (or use the failsafe session if that is working.)

You can then look at /etc/passwd to see what accounts are on the machine. If a home directory is truly missing under /home, then just create a folder for the user and set the user as owner of the folder. You should then be able to log in as that user.

[pghohnst]

I checked out the passwd file, the username I'm trying to use is listed, with /home/aerotl as the home directory.

I tried creating the directory using:

mkdir /home/username

and got an error, "mkdir: cannot create directory '/home/username': No such file or directory"

[meton_magis]

do you have a /home directory?

[pghohnst]

I can see a home directory when I do an ls in the root directory.

When you go to the home directory and do ls though, it doesn't list anything.

[meton_magis]

what about

mkdir -p /home/username

[pghohnst]

Nope, I still got the same error.

I was able to get myself to log in though. I created a directory called "home3" (there was already a "home2" for some reason), then did mkdir /home3/user and set that as the default home directory.

That doesn't really solve the problem, but I guess it works for now.