Common Home Directories - Yast

SUSE Product Topics SLES Configure-Administer
1

Hello. I have a FTP server running SLES11 SP2. The users are stored locally and we are trying to use Yast to create and manage those accounts. The server is used only for FTP and these users will never logon on another service.

Normally, we create them with the same home folder /ftp, but everytime I try to create a user Yast throws me a “the home directory is used by another user try again” message.

I am quite aware that this is not the best way to do it and by far not the safest but other circumstances involving legacy software forces me to use the shared home folder strategy.

I would like to know if I can change the behaviour of the Yast “Users and Group Administration” panel as follows:

  • allows the creation of shared directories
  • by default do not try to change the home directory permissions
  • by default do not try to create the home directory

I’ve meddled with /etc/default/useradd and other config files and didn’t found an obvious way to do this.

Thanks in advance.

2

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3

Does this have to be done under yast?

#> mkdir /home/ftp
#> useradd -d /home/ftp user1 -c “FTP User” -p mypassword
#> useradd -d /home/ftp user2 -c “FTP User” -p anotherpassword
#> chmod 766 /home/ftp

Of course only one of those users can actually “own” the directory.
As you said, this isn’t a best practice.