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neildeadman
Asked: 2012-07-06 00:06:31 +0800 CST

How to Automatically Create Home Directory for Active Directory User on Solaris (using PowerBroker)

  • 772

I have a number of existing users in Active Directory that need a home directory created. They don't log directly in to Solaris but into a service running on that box.

If I login as them their home directory gets created and then they can login.

This is the same for new users too!

As there are a lot of users, I need a way to automate this so new users and existing users have it created automatically.

Is this possible??

solaris active-directory home-directory user-accounts likewise-open

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Unlike Linux, there is no standard pam module like pam_mkhomedir to achieve this task on Solaris. While compiling this pam module would likely just work, there are alternatives like creating the home directory if missing in /etc/profile or setting up an executable auto_home map.

    Using /etc/profile to create the user's home directory would require using rbac or sudo so an automounter based solution is simpler to implement, eg:

    In the /etc/auto_master file, comment out the line:

    # /home         auto_home       -nobrowse

    and add this line:

    /home           /opt/local/mkhomedir

    Note: I'm assuming here the previous auto_home map wasn't already used by actual users.

    Create the /opt/local/mkhomedir script with this content:

    #!/bin/ksh -p
actual=/tmp/home # top directory to store user's home directories
homedir=$(echo ~$1)
hd=$actual/$1
if [ $(dirname $homedir) = /home -a ! -d $hd ]; then
  mkdir -p $hd
  chmod 0700 $hd
  chown $1 $hd
fi
echo localhost:$hd

    and that's it. Every user configured to have his home in /home/username will have this directory automatically created at first access if necessary. Of course, you should replace /tmp/home by something more persistent in the mkhomedir script, eg /export/home which is the usual location for home directory back-end storage on Solaris.

    • 4

  2. You have two options:

    • if you can have your service use PAM, then you can have pam_mkhomedir create it for you.
    • you can do a batch overnight job and create homedirs based on the user list.
    • 0

  3. Use this project

    https://github.com/benr/solaris_pam_mkhomedir

    You can use the existing SUNWgcc package if you want.

    • -1

  4. It IS Happening automatically - when a user logs into a computer. Sorry, that is the way MS has designed it.

    Best chance you have is logging in via remote desktop on a windows machine (should be scriptable) with a logoff automatic script ;)

    • -3