[SOLVED] /home users disappeared

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 03:22 AM

I was implementing NIS server and NIS client using the following tutorial http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...S#.UQdopPJAjGM
While performing the steps I did not backup my /home dir to /home.save and continued the steps, resulting the local users are lost now.

Code:

login as: nagios
nagios@172.22.0.41's password:
Last login: Tue Jan 29 14:34:06 2013 from 172.22.0.48
Could not chdir to home directory /home/nagios: No such file or directory
-bash-3.2$

acid_kewpie · 01-29-2013, 03:38 AM

right.... so you've renamed the directory... what's the problem here? Obviously if you move /home to somewhere else, /home won't exist anymore

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 03:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie

right.... so you've renamed the directory... what's the problem here? Obviously if you move /home to somewhere else, /home won't exist anymore

While performing the steps I did not backup my /home dir to /home.save

shivaa · 01-29-2013, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abhinav4

While performing the steps I did not backup my /home dir to /home.save

So where's old home directory? According to this doc, you would have to move /home to /home.save and then create a new /home and mount it.

Have you removed old /home dir? If yes, then you've only one alternative, i.e. create new home directories for all local users inside /home (i.e. new /home) and change each home directory's owner/group permissions to their corresponding owners.

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 05:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shivaa

So where's old home directory? According to this doc, you would have to move /home to /home.save and then create a new /home and mount it.

Have you removed old /home dir? If yes, then you've only one alternative, i.e. create new home directories for all local users inside /home (i.e. new /home) and change each home directory's owner/group permissions to their corresponding owners.

No I have not moved the /home directory, I forgot to move the /home dir, so the existing local users should be there in the /home directory, but it does not shows the local users there.

acid_kewpie · 01-29-2013, 05:07 AM

oh right, sorry

yes, so you've just mounted the nfs share over the top. unmount it and the local files will still be there.

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 05:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie

oh right, sorry

yes, so you've just mounted the nfs share over the top. unmount it and the local files will still be there.

Hmm, well I have shutdown the nfs share server and still the problem exists. I completely init 0 the system which was having the nfs share, after which I restarted the client machine and still the problem exists.

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# ls -l /home/
total 0
[root@redhat ~]#

[root@redhat ~]# su - nagios
su: warning: cannot change directory to /home/nagios: No such file or directory
-bash-3.2$

TobiSGD · 01-29-2013, 05:25 AM

Did you unmount the NFS share? Just shutting down the NFS server can cause all kinds of unwanted and weird behavior.

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

Did you unmount the NFS share? Just shutting down the NFS server can cause all kinds of unwanted and weird behavior.

Nope I did not unmount the nfs share. I just init 0 to both server and client and then started client only. I understand the risks but these are just the test machines, so risk could be taken (I actually want some error to come so troubleshooting could be done

)

acid_kewpie · 01-29-2013, 05:47 AM

why is going to init 0 "just"? It's MUCH easier to just unmount the thing...

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 05:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie

why is going to init 0 "just"? It's MUCH easier to just unmount the thing...

Well I realized that later on that, I should have just unmounted the share

abhinav4 · 01-29-2013, 11:11 PM

Ok, I did some troubleshooting and got the issue fixed.
Maybe this would be helpful to others in similar situation.
There were no files in the home directoryas you can see

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# ls -l /home/
total 0

I was neither able to create any files under /home even though I was a root

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# mkdir /home/sah
mkdir: cannot create directory `/home/sah': No such file or directory

I checked what all the partitions were mounted

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# mount -l
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw) [/boot]
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

The above output made me suspicious about nfs, but my nfs server was already halted, anyways I proceeded with stopping the below services.

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# service portmap stop
Stopping portmap:                                          [  OK  ]
[root@redhat ~]# service nfslock stop
Stopping NFS statd:                                        [  OK  ]
[root@redhat ~]# service netfs stop

Commented the entry made in the automounter

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# vi /etc/auto.master

Stopped the automounter service

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# service autofs stop
Stopping automount:

Crossed my fingers and did ls -l, after seeing the output it gave me some relief. I was able to see my directories.

Code:

[root@redhat ~]# ls -l /home/
total 20
drwx------ 4 nagios nagios 4096 Dec 26 12:21 nagios
drwx------ 3 sah    sah    4096 Nov  8 17:34 sah
drwx------ 3 user1  user1  4096 Dec  4 12:18 user1
drwx------ 3 user2  user2  4096 Dec  4 12:18 user2

Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions to reach me till this point