FreeBSD user home directory

[Russell Haley]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 1:56 PM, Glen Barber <gjb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 01:45:47PM -0600, Russell Haley wrote:
>>  Hi guys,
>>
>> Note: auto-correct on this computer is setting freebsd to FreeBSD.
>> Please assume lowercase where appropriate if I don't catch them all.
>>
>> I've decided to be lazy and just use the default freebsd user with the
>> stuff I'm doing right now.  I have two separate instances running:
>> 10.2 in a Digital Ocean instance and arm 11-ALPHA-6 on my
>> Hummingboard.
>>
>> The home directory for the FreeBSD user on the 10.2 cloud instance is
>> in the expected location of /usr/home/freebsd.
>>
>> freebsd at do:~ % pwd
>> /usr/home/freebsd
>>
>> However, the arm build puts the freebsd home directory is under /home/freebsd
>>
>> freebsd at imx6:~ % pwd
>> /home/freebsd
>>
>> Thanks to a previous conversation with Mikael I have found that the
>> script /usr/src/release/tools/arm.subr calls function
>> arm_create_user()  which places the user under /home (like debian).
>> Can someone indicate if this is a mistake (which I think it is) or on
>> purpose.
>>   From http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/11/release/tools/arm.subr?view=markup:
>>
>
> No, this was not a mistake.  This is from the pw(8) manual:
>
> -d dir        This option sets the account's home directory.  Normally,
>               this is only used if the home directory is to be different
>               from the default determined from /etc/pw.conf - normally
>               /home with the account name as a subdirectory.
>
> It's a matter of preference.  Some installs will create /home as
> a symlink to /usr/home, some with /usr/home as a symlink to /home.
>
>> 79 arm_create_user() {
>> 80 # Create a default user account 'freebsd' with the password 'freebsd',
>> 81 # and set the default password for the 'root' user to 'root'.
>> 82 chroot ${CHROOTDIR} /usr/sbin/pw -R ${DESTDIR} \
>> 83 groupadd freebsd -g 1001
>> 84 chroot ${CHROOTDIR} mkdir -p ${DESTDIR}/home/freebsd
>> 85 chroot ${CHROOTDIR} /usr/sbin/pw -R ${DESTDIR} \
>> 86 useradd freebsd \
>> 87 -m -M 0755 -w yes -n freebsd -u 1001 -g 1001 -G 0 \
>> 88 -c 'FreeBSD User' -d '/home/freebsd' -s '/bin/csh'
>> 89 chroot ${CHROOTDIR} /usr/sbin/pw -R ${DESTDIR} \
>> 90 usermod root -w yes
>> 91
>> 92 return 0
>> 93}
>>
>> Incidentally, I tried to look up the "correct location" by using man
>> hier and neither instance indicates that a home folder even exists! I
>> also believe this to be an oversight. Again, if it is, please let me
>> know and I will attempt to create the correct problem report and
>> hopefully at some point some patches (i'm not in my usual environment
>> so doing stuff with src isn't convenient right now).
>>
>
> With the manual page quote above, I don't think there is any "wrong"
> behavior here.
>
> On your DigitalOcean machine, does /home exist?  If so, I suspect it is
> a symlink.

Thanks for the awesome fast response Glen. Yes, you are correct there
is a symlink to /home in the DO instance. However in the arm instance
there are no symlinks in either direction:

freebsd at imx6:/% ll
total 81
-rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel     1481 Jul  1 16:06 .cshrc
-rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel      750 Jul  1 16:06 .profile
drwxrwxr-x   2 root  operator   512 Jul  1 15:42 .snap/
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel     6190 Jul  1 15:44 COPYRIGHT
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     1024 Jul  1 15:43 bin/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root  wheel     1024 Jul  1 17:25 boot/
dr-xr-xr-x  17 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 17:25 dev/
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     4096 Jul  1 17:25 entropy
drwxr-xr-x  25 root  wheel     2560 Jul  2 11:52 etc/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel      512 Jul  2 11:52 home/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel     1536 Jul  1 15:43 lib/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 15:42 libexec/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 15:42 media/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 15:42 mnt/
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 15:42 proc/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     2560 Jul  1 15:43 rescue/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel      512 Jul  2 00:02 root/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     2560 Jul  1 15:44 sbin/
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel       11 Jul  1 15:42 sys@ -> usr/src/sys
drwxrwxrwt   7 root  wheel      180 Jul  2 09:35 tmp/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root  wheel      512 Jul  2 11:52 usr/
drwxr-xr-x  24 root  wheel      512 Jul  1 17:25 var/



freebsd at imx6:/usr% ll
total 76
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   8192 Jul  1 15:44 bin/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    512 Jul  2 11:52 home/
drwxr-xr-x  54 root  wheel   6656 Jul  1 15:43 include/
drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel  15360 Jul  1 15:44 lib/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel    512 Jul  1 15:42 lib32/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel    512 Jul  1 15:42 libdata/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root  wheel   1536 Jul  1 15:44 libexec/
drwxr-xr-x  14 root  wheel    512 Jul  2 00:02 local/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    512 Jul  1 15:42 obj/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   5120 Jul  1 15:44 sbin/
drwxr-xr-x  33 root  wheel   1024 Jul  1 15:42 share/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    512 Jul  1 15:42 src/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root  wheel    512 Jul  1 15:44 tests/

 Which seems to me to still be in error as there are now TWO home directories.

Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention when generating users but
I could have sworn that all previous users I create went under
/usr/home (I know, I'm being pedantic if the symlink exists).

Thanks
Russ