Red Hat Knowledgebase

Release found:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Solution:
The service pam_mkhomedir relies on the program doing the authentication (su, or login for example), to have enough permissions to create the home directories. This is not the case, as most authentication applications drops the permissions to avoid security problems.

To create home directories on-the-fly, use pam_oddjob_mkhomedir instead. In this case, the directory creation will be handled by a D-Bus service running as root instead.

• Update the oddjob package:

  up2date -i oddjob
  

• Restart D-Bus, this might require to restart some services that rely on D-Bus, such as hal:

  #service messagebus restart 
  

• Start the oddjob service:

  #service oddjobd restart 
  

• Make sure it runs on startup:

  #chkconfig oddjobd on 
  

• Modify the PAM configuration to use pam_oddjob_mkhomedir. For example, add this line at the bottom of /etc/pam.d/system-auth:

  session required pam_oddjob_mkhomedir.so
  

• In the configuration file oddjobd.conf, put the following two options:

  skel=/etc/skel/
  umask=0022
  

Now to test if it is working, try to log in as a user that does not have a home directory.