Login without home directory

[Michael McClary]

In article <5887 at helios.TAMU.EDU> ronniek at cs.tamu.edu (Ronnie Killough) writes:


>[]  So, what is the big deal with letting someone login if they don't
>have a home directory?  The Suns just say "hey, no home dir...logging in
>with home = /".  HOW DO I DO THIS ON THE MACS?

You hack /bin/login.  That's what Sun did, after all.  B-)

If you don't have sources (and I suspect you don't), don't want to or
aren't able to obtain them (which I suspect you don't/can't) and don't
have the time to decompile it (which I also suspect you don't, if you
don't have time to play with automount) you might manage with something
more elaborate and indirect.  (I'm not running A/UX at the moment, so
I'll just sketch.)

Try an experiment.  Write a shell script something like this:

	echo foo
	exec /bin/sh	## Your favorite shell here.

Install it as /bin/foosh, run it to make sure the permissions are right,
then see if:

        +:::99:99::/:/bin/foosh

Makes it run when people log in over the net.  If it does, you can write
a script or program to:

 - Dig their home directory out of the YP database.
 - Switch to it if it's mounted.  (Or try to mount it if you feel adventurous.
   Make sure you've demoted them if you ran as root to do that.)
 - Dig out their favorite shell ditto.
 - Exec it (as -whatever, so it will run .login/.profile).

If it works, you might want to post it for the rest of us.

(Hmmm.  I lifted the /etc/passwd line from the previous post, but I bet
 it should be "+::99:99::/:/bin/foosh")