Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!ronniek
From: ronniek@cs.tamu.edu (Ronnie Killough)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: Login without home directory
Message-ID: <5887@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 14 Jun 90 19:57:41 GMT
References: <5801@helios.TAMU.EDU> <2377@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Lines: 46

In article <2377@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> liam@cs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts) writes:
>In <5801@helios.TAMU.EDU> ronniek@cs.tamu.edu (Ronnie Killough) writes:
>
>>I have a Mac IIci, A/UX 1.1.1.  I want to allow someone to login
>>even if they don't have a home directory (i.e. the account is a
>>YP account, but their home directory is not mounted).
>
>They do need to have somewhere as a working directory in which
>to run their shell. I suggest that you use YP to give everyone
>a default working directory, e.g. the password entry
>
>        +:::99:99::/tmp:
>
>which picks up everything from YP except their home directory,

This won't work, because I want those who do have their home dir
mounted to be able to use it as the home dir.

>Another alternative is to have a guest home directory with a
>.login or .profile (as appropriate) that warns people that they
>have guest facilities and are not in their home directories.

But what do I add to the system so that it will use this guest home
directory if their real home directory cannot be found?

>PS. Why not mount their home directory anyway?

Well, all of the accounts in the CS department here are YP account,
so you get 1 account and login to any (UNIX) machine...suns, mac A/UX,
NeXT, SGI, IBM RT, Sequent, you name it.  All of these machines are
file-served from a Sun sparc-server, so (almost) all of the YP account
home directories are on the sparc-server.  So, the partitions containing
the user's home directories is mounted on all the Unix boxes.

The problem is: some of the faculty have their home directories on their
local machine.  Their home directory IS exported, and since the Suns run
the automounter, these are automatically mounted on the Suns if they log
into something other than their office machine.  But the Mac isn't running
the automounter (I don't have time to try to compile the PD one), and I
don't want to have to maintain the stupid fstab file to mount 15 or 20
different filesystems and leave them mounted for 15 or 20 different faculty
members.  So, what is the big deal with letting someone login if they don't
have a home directory?  The Suns just say "hey, no home dir...logging in
with home = /".  HOW DO I DO THIS ON THE MACS?

Thanks :-).