[SOLVED] Not able to move a user's home directory

fanoflq · 03-11-2017, 02:00 PM

#Want to move user lisa1 home directory, /home/lisa1 to
# to reside in new parent home directory, /home/home0,
as in /home/home0/lisa1.

Code:

[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# ls
lisa0  lisa1  user1  user2
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# mkdir home0
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# usermod -md /home/home0 lisa1
usermod: directory /home/home0 exists
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# ls -l /home/home0
total 0
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]#

From man usermod:

Quote:

-d, --home HOME_DIR
The user's new login directory.

If the -m option is given, the contents of the
current home directory will be moved to the new
home directory, which is created if it does not
already exist. If the current home directory does
not exist the new home directory will not be created.

-m, --move-home
Move the content of the user's home directory to the new location.

Why is it not working?

hydrurga · 03-11-2017, 02:07 PM

usermod -md /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1

fanoflq · 03-11-2017, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrurga

usermod -md /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1

Did not work.
Did you try it?

hydrurga · 03-11-2017, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fanoflq

Did not work.
Did you try it?

You said that you wanted the user's home directory to become /home/home0/lisa1. Your command, as originally stated, directed that the home directory of user lisa1 become /home/home0.

That's what I was pointing out.

fanoflq · 03-11-2017, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrurga

You said that you wanted the user's home directory to become /home/home0/lisa1. Your command, as originally stated, directed that the home directory of user lisa1 become /home/home0.

That's what I was pointing out.

The option -m will copy directory lisa1 and its subdirectories to
/home/hme0.
But that did not happen.

Code:

[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# ls
home0  lisa0  lisa1  user1  user2
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# ls -al home0
total 0
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root  6 Mar 11 12:58 .
drwxr-xr-x. 7 root root 66 Mar 11 11:50 ..
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# usermod -md /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1
usermod: no changes
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal home]# ls -al home0                                                                        
total 0
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root  6 Mar 11 12:58 .
drwxr-xr-x. 7 root root 66 Mar 11 11:50 ..

The command did not work.
Neither did this command:

Quote:

usermod -md /home/home0 lisa1

That was my original question.

hydrurga · 03-11-2017, 04:03 PM

I've just been trying it out on a test box and have to admit that the -m option is doing nothing for me too.

In the end I created the new directory folder at /home/home0/lisa1, recursively copied everything over from the old home directory to the new directory, chown -R lisa1:lisa1 /home/home0/lisa1, then usermod -d /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1. I then logged out and back in again as lisa1. All worked ok. It still doesn't explain why the usermod -m option wouldn't work though.

fanoflq · 03-11-2017, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrurga

I've just been trying it out on a test box and have to admit that the -m option is doing nothing for me too.

In the end I created the new directory folder at /home/home0/lisa1, ran chown -R lisa1:lisa1 /home/home0/lisa1, recursively copied everything over from the old home directory to the new directory, then usermod -d /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1. I then logged out and back in again as lisa1. All worked ok. It still doesn't explain why the usermod -m option wouldn't work though.

Thank you.
Do you think it is a bug?
The -d option works!
Take a look here:

Code:

[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# echo $HOME                                                                    
/root
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# ls /home
home0  lisa0  lisa1  user1  user2
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# mkdir /home/home0/lisa1
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# ls /home/home0
lisa1
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# usermod -d /home/home0/lisa1 lisa1
[root@Centos7-1024ram-minimal ~]# su - lisa1
Last login: Sat Mar 11 14:16:48 MST 2017 on pts/0
-bash-4.2$ pwd
/home/home0/lisa1
-bash-4.2$ echo $HOME
/home/home0/lisa1

Why does it go into this prompt after command : su - lisa1 ?

Code:

-bash-4.2$

hydrurga · 03-11-2017, 04:44 PM

Just a note to say that I changed the order of the commands in post #6 to ensure that all the directories and files copied over to the new home directory are brought back under lisa1's ownership if for some reason they aren't.

I don't know if it is a bug but the -m option certainly doesn't appear to work for me. The -d option appears to correctly change the user's home directory details stored in /etc/passwd.

The home directory normally includes .bashrc that controls how the prompt is displayed. In your case, the new home directory does not yet contain any files. So, if you recursively copy all the files over to the new home directory (and ensure that they are all owned by lisa1) before issuing the su command, then the proper prompt should be displayed.

fanoflq · 03-11-2017, 04:47 PM

@hydrurga:

Quote:

I don't know if it is a bug but the -m option certainly doesn't appear to work for me.

Same here.
Thank you.

It should be reported to the author.
But there is no author on the usermod man page.

hydrurga · 03-11-2017, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fanoflq

@hydrurga:

Same here.
Thank you.

It should be reported to the author.
But there is no author on the usermod man page.

Of course it might be that we're both just misunderstanding or misusing the command.

usermod is supplied by the passwd package, which in my case is maintained by Ubuntu. I'm not sure what the setup for CentOS is, but I imagine that it is maintained by the CentOS guys. The CentOS bug tracker is at https://bugs.centos.org/main_page.php .