User Home Directory

[klevin-kun]

Hello,

I hope I'm not creating a duplicate discussion.
I'd like to know if it's possible to change the default directory format created during a user's first login. Does it possible to switch from the format "<home_base_dir>/<'username'>" to "<home_base_dir>/<'mailnickname'>" for example? or any other value ?

I remain at your disposal for any further information.

[adombeck]

Hi @klevin-kun! The directory where user home directories are created in can be configured in /var/snap/authd-msentraid/current/broker.conf (or /var/snap/authd-google/current/broker.conf if you're using the Google IAM broker):

[users]
## The directory where the home directories of new users are created.
## Existing users will keep their current home directory.
## The home directories are created in the format <home_base_dir>/<username>
#home_base_dir = /home

@edibotopic: I see that's not documented in https://documentation.ubuntu.com/authd/en/latest/howto/configure-authd/ yet. I think we should do that.

[3v1n0]

I think the request is also about using a different username value here.

And that's something we don't support, as it potentially could lead to clashing user names.

It's true that in specific setups where the suffix is always the same this can't happen, but we didn't add an option in order to strip the suffix.

Maybe we could add an option to strip the ssh_allowed_suffixes value (likely to be renamed then) but that can happen only if it contains one suffix.

[adombeck]

Ah, the initial version of the question did not include a different username. Indeed, we don't support that, and there are currently no plans to support it.

[klevin-kun]

(Sorry for the abrupt modification of the first post)
Thank you both for your clear and precise feedback.

[yarohenning]

@3v1n0 Thanks for the clarification.
For sssd there is the option to create a home directory by name parts e.g. /home/<domain>/<user> from /home/%d/%u
This also avoids the problem of having an @ in the username which might lead to problems...
Is there a similar solution?

[adombeck]

For sssd there is the option to create a home directory by name parts e.g. /home// from /home/%d/%u
This also avoids the problem of having an @ in the username which might lead to problems...

I like that! authd currently does not support that, but I think it would be a nice feature, and not too much effort to implement. I'll create an issue to track this feature request.