Hello,

I´ve just started using a Solaris machine with SunOS 5.10.
After the machine is turned on, I open a Console window and at the prompt, if I execute a pwd command, it tells me I´m at my home directory (someone configured "myuser" as default user after init).

But the weird thing is that if I run a ls command, it shows me that in fact, it´s at the root directory (!!!)

And if I go to a subdirectory, something stranger happens.
It assumes a false path.
If I try to call this false path, the shell naturally can´t do it.

But if I call my home path, it works as expected.
Well, I´m not so experienced with Unix and I have no idea what can be wrong. I looked some files such as .profile, dtautologin, but couldn´t find anything that seemed to be causing this problem.

Can anyone give me a idea of what´s wrong with the configuration of this machine ?

It sounds a bit like a jailed/chroot user.

When one creates a jailed/chroot user they are restricting the user to only what can be seen under that user. When logged in as that user what he sees as root (/) is actually just root for that user. The real path to the the user's home as seen by a non-jailed user (e.g. the root user) would be a much longer path.

e.g. If i have a user called billybob that I've jailed (on Linux - I don't have Solaris to use for example) the full path I see to the jailed user's home directory when I'm logged in as root is:
/restricted/users/billybob/home/billybob

However when billybob himself logs in he sees his home as /home/billybob. Moreover if he tried to see /restricted/users/billybob it will fail because the jailing restricts him to only see things from his jailed directory down and not anything above it. If he lists root ("/") what he sees is actually what would be seen by the non-jailed user as /restricted/users/billybob. So that would typically contain things he'd need such as usr, etc, var, dev with limited files. The /dev/null the jailed user might see would actually be /restricted/users/billybob/dev/null for the non-jailed user. Similarly /etc/passwd he sees would in reality be /restricted/users/billybob/etc/passwd.

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MensaWater,

Thanks for your answer. In fact this sounds a bit like jailing. But what I see is the opposite of what you described.

I´ve read that jailing is used to restrict access of users only to their home directory.
But in my case, "myuser" can see the whole file system.
In fact, as I described, this user already had access to the root while the SO was misunderstanding this user was at his home directory (/home/staff/myuser).

This is like we have two "/home/staff/myuser" directories seen by the SunOS.
One is the real path. The other is like an alias the SO gave for the root directory.
What could be causing this ? Looks like a SunOS bug for me, but I don´t know much about this SO.

Everything you show is very non standard so if there is a bug, or possibly a misunderstanding, it is due to the oddly configured customization that have been done on that system, and specially on the shell you use.

Standard Solaris shells do not provide such bizarre prompts. You should first tell what shell you are using and what PS1 is set to.

PS: please edit your first post in advanced mode and add code tags to make things more readable.

I couldn´t find PS1 among the environment variables. Where should it be, instead ?

But I think this question is not just related to the prompt.
When I open the Console, the prompt says I´m at "myuser". And if I execute "pwd", Solaris confirms that I´m there (/home/staff/myuser).
But then I execute "ls", and Solaris does not show the files on "myuser". It shows the files on the root directory.
Very strange.

Do "pwd -P" or "pwd -L" yield anything different from plain "pwd"? Or, for that matter, "/bin/pwd"?

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Your samples show a highly customized prompt. You might be running non Bourne shell.

Is the behavior better after you type these commands?

Yes, but you can't trust the prompt if you don't even know how it is built.

You can't trust "pwd" if you don't know what "pwd" is executed.

Same as the above. You can't trust "ls" if you don't know what "ls" is executed.

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Just to be clear:
If a jailed user logs in he/she will in fact see a "root" (/) heirarchy - it just won't be the REAL root heirarchy that a non-jailed user sees. You could verify what you're seeing by opening separate sessions for a non-jailed user (e.g. the root user itself) and the jailed user. Put a file in / as the non-jailed user and chmod 777 the file so it is visible by all users. Then go to the (suspected) jailed user session and do "ls -l /". If that session doesn't see the file then you have confirmed the "/" he is seeing is not the same as the one the non-jailed user saw.

Other than jailing, there are things such as symbolic links and loop back mounts (I'm not sure the latter exists in Solaris) where you can make things go to other directories or files in alternate paths than the the "real" path in which the directories or files exist.

@rknichols:

"pwd -P" yielded this: "/home/staff/myuser -P"

"pwd -L" yielded this: "/home/staff/myuser -L"

But: "/bin/pwd" yielded "/".

I think you´ve caught the answer. But as a newbie, I need to ask: what does that mean ?

In fact, I´m running csh.

Yes ! now it started making sense.
Now my problem is that I still need to find what was wrong.

Once I found it somewhere. I´ll try to search it again.

Ok, many thanks ... I didn´t know about these possibilities.
Does that seem that the commands I´m using have a different behavior from what it´s expected ?

Run command "which pwd" (after initial login so it is using the csh environment). What does it show?

I may be it is a script or an alias that is doing this.

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I found in /home/staff/config a file ".cshrc.mycompany" with the instruction:

That was the point.
The path shown in the prompt comes from $cwd, which in some circumstances may present a value that´s not the current directory.

That explains the prompts.

This is shown:

So it is aliased to a variable called cwd.

What does "printenv cwd" show?

The shell's notion of the current directory reflects how it got there. For example, on this machine I have directory /var/home/ bind-mounted on /home. My home directory is officially (in /etc/passwd) "/home/rnichols", and that is what pwd reports in my login shell. If I execute "cd /var/home/rnichols" (which is the exact same directory), then the shell's built-in pwd returns "/var/home/rnichols".

In bourne-derived shells, the "-P" option on pwd causes the shell to ignore the remembered path and trace the physical filesystem tree. That's also what happens when you run the external program "/bin/pwd". For me, both of those return "/home/rnichols" regardless of how I got there. Now I see that you are using csh, which obviously does not understand the "-P" or "-L" options.

As has been suggested, it looks like you are in a chroot jail, and your home directory is also the effective filesystem root.