Hi, I'm running CentOS on vmware.

I've created a user named al with home directory "/users/al" (/users directory exists and owned by root with 755 permissions).

When i log in i get a message "No directory /users/al. Logging in with HOME=/". The directory does exist, it was created when i added the user. I can cd into it with al and al is the owner of it.
When i try to log in using putty and ssh i get a different message: "Permission denied" but again i can cd to the directory.

It's really important that my users home direcotries will be under /users and not /home.

Thanks.

check the /etc/passwd which is home directory for user al
when we create user we can specify the home_directory other than the default
#useradd -d /path username

I've created the user with "useradd -d /users/al -m". The home directory in /etc/passwd is /users/al and the directory does exist.

Just before I did test, everything fine to ssh using ram. In your case check further /var/log/secure, /var/log/audit/audit.log and SElinux

I found that it has to do with SELinux. I disabled it and now it works. Thanks.

personally i would NOT change /home/UserName
way too many things depend on $HOME

there SHOULD have been a SELinuxTroubleShooter gold star giving you an error and fix

turn SELinux back on and write a new rule for your moved $HOME folders
you might also have to rewrite a good chunk of the system files to use this different home folder .

We are migrating from an old hp unix server. The users home directories are under /users. We want to keep the new server as close as possible to the old one, since there are many scripts and programs that depend on the current directory layout. Disabling SELinux is just a temporary solution to allow users to log in and perform tests, i won't leave it like that.

Thanks for you help.