[SOLVED] Debian useradd and CREATE_HOME

Trying to get familiar with Debian 10. Here is my first hickup:

root@debian:~# grep CREATE /etc/login.defs
CREATE_HOME=yes
root@debian:~# useradd user123
root@debian:~# ls /home
student
root@debian:~#

According to the man pages for login.defs and useradd, CREATE_HOME should make useradd create the home directory. What am I missing?

Hi,

not sure. However on Debian you should probably use adduser, not useradd. From the useradd man page:

DESCRIPTION
       useradd is a low level utility for adding users. On 
       Debian, administrators should usually use adduser(8)
       instead.

Evo2.

Originally Posted by berndbausch According to the man pages for login.defs and useradd, CREATE_HOME should make useradd create the home directory. What am I missing?

That "CREATE_HOME" does not apply to system users:

   -m, --create-home
           Create the user's home directory if it does not exist. The files and
           directories contained in the skeleton directory (which can be defined with the
           -k option) will be copied to the home directory.

           By default, if this option is not specified and CREATE_HOME is not enabled, no
           home directories are created.
(and further on)
    CREATE_HOME (boolean)
           Indicate if a home directory should be created by default for new users.

           This setting does not apply to system users, and can be overridden on the
           command line.

So best use the option -m to create home dirs (and make sure your /etc/default/useradd file has been created and filled with the right values for all you do not give on the commandline). For instance

HOME=/home

makes sure that that home dir will be created below /home, which otherwise is NOT the default, it is created as a subdir to the current one.

Originally Posted by ehartman That "CREATE_HOME" does not apply to system users:

I know, but this is not a system user. The values in the defaults file have their own defaults, such as HOME's default is /home:

man useradd
...
-b, --base-dir BASE_DIR
...
   If this option is not specified, useradd will use the base
   directory specified by the HOME variable in /etc/default/useradd,
   or /home by default.

Originally Posted by evo2 not sure. However on Debian you should probably use adduser, not useradd.

Good point, thanks.

Ugh. Attention to detail, as my CV says.

Instead of CREATE_HOME=yes, just write "CREATE_HOME yes". Without the equals sign.

To my defense, /etc/default/useradd is indeed a shell script. Why login.defs is not - well, I guess historic reasons.

Originally Posted by evo2 However on Debian you should probably use adduser, not useradd.

adduser is a script over useradd, it asks for all of the values for the pasword file and then issues an useradd command with all values given, so it doesn't rely on /etc/default/useradd nor /etc/login.defs, everything is given through useradd command line options (except the password, for which passwd is called directly).

$ file /usr/sbin/adduser /usr/sbin/adduser: Bourne-Again shell script, ASCII text executable

(in Slackware).

It's also a script that calls useradd in Debian but it's in written in perl and gets the config from /etc/adduser.conf

Evo2.

Originally Posted by ehartman adduser is a script over useradd, it asks for all of the values for the pasword file and then issues an useradd command with all values given, so it doesn't rely on /etc/default/useradd nor /etc/login.defs, everything is given through useradd command line options (except the password, for which passwd is called directly). (in Slackware).