Hi guys.

Experimenting with Solaris 10 (11/06) I noticed a strange behaviour. If I create an user with useradd (skel dir: /etc/skel, shell: bash) the user PATH contains the directory /usr/openwin/bin and no .profile file is copied in user's home (some local.{login, profile, etc} files are copied from skel, in fact). If I create the same user with smc, a .profile and a .cshrc file is copied into user's home which sets his PATH to a very basic one (should be /usr/bin:/usr/ucb:.). What caught my attention is that /usr/openwin/bin in user PATH is required by some JDS components (such as xscreensaver) to work properly.

Is this smc behaviour by design?
Thanx,
Enrico.

Like smc, useradd copies the skeleton files if you ask for by using the "-m" option.

In my opinion, the way the PATH is set in the default /etc/skel files is broken anyway. It shouldn't set/overwrite the default path as this is already done in /etc/default/login file. Adding /usr/ucb to the PATH is dubious too.

You can also use webmin to create accounts, and an OpenSolaris project (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/vpanels/) plan to provide a better administration interface.

thank you very much jlliagre. I'll try that tool.

Bye,
Enrico.

Beware that vpanels is currently a work in progress so it may not be able to create user accounts yet. On the other hand, webmin is established since a while in the Open Source world, so it may be a better option.

You need to run once /usr/sfw/bin/webminsetup before using webmin on Solaris.