pam_mkhomedir(8) — Linux manual page

PAM_MKHOMEDIR(8)            Linux-PAM Manual            PAM_MKHOMEDIR(8)

NAME

       pam_mkhomedir - PAM module to create users home directory

SYNOPSIS

       pam_mkhomedir.so [silent] [debug] [umask=mode] [skel=skeldir]

DESCRIPTION

       The pam_mkhomedir PAM module will create a users home directory
       if it does not exist when the session begins. This allows users
       to be present in central database (such as NIS, kerberos or LDAP)
       without using a distributed file system or pre-creating a large
       number of directories. The skeleton directory (usually
       /etc/skel/) is used to copy default files and also sets a umask
       for the creation.

       The new users home directory will not be removed after logout of
       the user.

OPTIONS

       silent
           Don't print informative messages.

       debug
           Turns on debugging via syslog(3).

       umask=mask
           The file mode creation mask is set to mask. The default value
           of mask is 0022. If this option is not specified, then the
           permissions of created user home directory is set to the
           value of HOME_MODE configuration item from /etc/login.defs.
           If there is no such configuration item then the value is
           computed from the value of UMASK in the same file. If there
           is no such configuration option either the default value of
           0755 is used for the mode.

       skel=/path/to/skel/directory
           Indicate an alternative skel directory to override the
           default /etc/skel.

MODULE TYPES PROVIDED

       Only the session module type is provided.

RETURN VALUES

       PAM_BUF_ERR
           Memory buffer error.

       PAM_PERM_DENIED
           Not enough permissions to create the new directory or read
           the skel directory.

       PAM_USER_UNKNOWN
           User not known to the underlying authentication module.

       PAM_SUCCESS
           Environment variables were set.

FILES

       /etc/skel
           Default skel directory

EXAMPLES

       A sample /etc/pam.d/login file:

             auth       requisite   pam_securetty.so
             auth       sufficient  pam_ldap.so
             auth       required    pam_unix.so
             auth       required    pam_nologin.so
             account    sufficient  pam_ldap.so
             account    required    pam_unix.so
             password   required    pam_unix.so
             session    required    pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel/ umask=0022
             session    required    pam_unix.so
             session    optional    pam_lastlog.so
             session    optional    pam_mail.so standard

SEE ALSO

       pam.d(5), pam(8).

AUTHOR

       pam_mkhomedir was written by Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@debian.org>.

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the linux-pam (Pluggable Authentication
       Modules for Linux) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨http://www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see ⟨//www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Linux-PAM Manual               12/22/2023               PAM_MKHOMEDIR(8)

Pages that refer to this page: mkhomedir_helper(8)

---