i can add a user fresh - and everything works fine. i login fine.

however, a username from a prior install has a hime directory that i'm trying to access. i need to create a user with that particular name.

the problem is, quite simply, i can't. i can create the user, but i can't login.

"but you just said you can create a user and user and login," you ask.

yes, but, in this case, i did a prior partial install. i hit this language just before entering a password for my new user:

"Warning: that home directory does not belong to the user you are currently creating"

i didn't want to delete my old home drive so i stopped w/o entering a password. it created a user, but i couldn't login.

i then deleted that user and recreated the same user following the standard instructions.

the user is created, but it can't login. when i switch users to that user, the screen goes blank and then i'm taken back to my old user's screen.

again, if i start from scratch, everythign goes well. if i partially create a user, quite and then create the user again, i can't login. i verified this is true with a second user.

any guidance would be appreciated.

tia...

You can use ls -n /home to see the uid and gid that the directory was created with. Then when you run useradd you can use the -u switch to re-use that uid. That will give you a new user with a uid that is the same as the owner of the original directory. Is that what you wanted to do?

use the oscenter to add the user, it handles that.

i used the oscenter to delete and add the old user, but i had the same problem. it adds the user, but i can't logon. i ended up right back in the oscenter under my current login user (not the old user that i'm trying to resurrect).

i think when i exited out of the useradd process just before entering the password, some setting must've changed and it is now causing these problems (you can repeat this problem. create a test user and close the shell when asked to enter a password. delete the user that was created and then add another test user, except complete the process. you shouldn't be able to login at that point).

i will try gilead's suggestion tomorrow (too tired to think now).

even if it works, though, i would still like to know how to resolve this situation.

also, i created a couple test users. when i deleted them, i didn't delete the home directory. if i manually delete the directory, will i be okay or will i be missing something i should delete.

tia...

Manually deleting the home directory after deleting the account is the same as userdel -r username. Once you've done that you can create the user from scratch and it won't matter what uid it has since it won't have to match any files.

It's probably worth checking the man page for your version of useradd. My version does not create the home directory without the -m switch. If you create the account that way, you should be able to create the user and give it ownership of the existing directory with chown.

gilead, my output for the user in question is...

drwxr-xr-x 45 1000 100 1992 2006-03-04 19:20 originaluser

is 45 the uid?

i tried "man ls", but it didn't break down the details of the output.

tia...

The 45 in that listing is the number of links - the user id is 1000 and the group id is 100. It's not in my man ls either, but the fields are:
Permissions, number of links, owner/user id, group id, number of bytes, date last modified, filename

Hope that helps...

I have/had the same probelm with a server I installed from (mistakenly) a release cnadidate of 3.4.3, can't get apache to work on that machine either

When you generate this userid freshly, do you assign a password ? (Asking this as some distros allow you to create usernames without a password)

not the first time. i got to the enter password section and then closed the window in order to prevent erasing my old home directory. however, now i can't create a user and password that will login.

i think that i created som setting when i initially tried to create a user. this setting probably needs to be deleted before i can start *fresh*.

i just don't know what it is or how to do it.

i had to reinstall mepis to get my original user up and running again.

GNewbie, what version of SM you using?
I'm just wiping a SM 3.4-3 install for "adding new user" problems.
It's a standard - fresh install, no updates, fresh home dir, very little use, no mods.
What I call a "clean skin".
When installed a new test user was created via MEPIS OS Center just fine and worked.
Weeks later, try to create new user same way no-go.
Why I don't know.
Will check other SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 installs that were upgraded to KDE 3.5.1
at time of install, see if they have same problem.
NH

the only time i had a problem is when i tried to set up a new user and stopped just prior to setting up the password.

when i tried to redo it - no go.

if your situation is different then i can't help. i had no problem adding multiple users without stopping before entering the password and then retrying the process later.

GN