Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!garnett
From: garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Simple System Question
Message-ID: <1034@tokio.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 90 19:52:39 GMT
References: <15005@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <1058@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <10978@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: UT at Austin, Dept. of CS
Lines: 41

In article <10978@helios.TAMU.EDU> cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Chuck Herrick) writes:
>In article <1058@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:
>>Edit /etc/nu.cf
>>On NeXTs it's considered conventional to create home directories
>>under /Users/.
>
>Actually, it's /user/
>
>But does this mean that if you edit nu.cf such that:
>
>WantSymbolicLinks = 1
>SymbolicLinkDir="/whatever"
>
>it will follow that from then on new users will end up under /whatever?
>pretty slick! And what if you have not first created /whatever?

If the /whatever directory does not exist, then the NewUser (nu) application
does NOT add anything to the /whatever directory.  If WantSymbolicLinks = 1
and SymbolicLinkDir = /whatever and the /whatever directory does exist,
then the NewUsers application will create a file in the /whatever directory
which will be a symbolic link to the user's actual home directory.

The user's actual home directory defaults to /${USERNAME}.  By changing
"DefaultHome" or "GroupHome" in /etc/nu.cf, it is possible to cause the
NewUser application to create the user's home directory in some directory
other than /.  See the online manual page for nu for more information
(i.e. type "man nu").

As an example of how all of this works, assume that WantSymbolicLinks = 1,
SymbolicLinkDir="/user", DefaultHome="/u", and the /user and /u directories
exist.  Adding a user named "test" will cause a home directory to be
created named /u/test with a symbolic link to it named /user/test.

The "GroupHome" variable allows the sysadmin to maintain separate user
directories for each group (for example, users in group "other" could go
in /u and users in group "system" could go in /u0).
-- 
John Garnett
                              University of Texas at Austin
garnett@cs.utexas.edu         Department of Computer Science
                              Austin, Texas