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Re: setup/mkpasswd and HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH


Larry Hall (Cygwin Developers) wrote:
> On 05/06/2009, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> > Don't we still need '/' as the ultamite default in '/etc/profile'
>> > > in case all others couldn't be accessed for some reason?
>>
>> Explain "couldn't be accessed".  The default case of /home/$USER
>> doesn't exist when a user starts bash for the first time.  So it
>> isn't "accessible", but /etc/profile will create the directory.
> 
> Sorry, I was too slow today, though as you say, we can always make
> changes if needed so I'll answer anyway. ;-)
> 
> I was basically thinking of the pathelogical case where the user
> doesn't have permissions to create or access the home directory
> due to some strange phenomena (somebody messed up permissions,
> '/home/<user>' points to a shared drive that's inaccessible, etc.).

  I was thinking of that too, but I'd hardly call it 'pathological'.  It's
standard practice on Linux for /home to be owned by root and only have r-x
perms for everyone else, as root is the only one who should be adding new
users and hence the only person who should be creating dirs in /home.

  In cygwin we're effectively letting non-admin users control most of the
'adduser' behaviour themselves.  Someone might easily think that chmod'ing
/home 755 was a good idea.

    cheers,
      DaveK


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