how to change a user home directory to adirectory that already exits?

Question

I have a website user who I want to be able to upload content to a folder on my server. I thought ok, I'll create a new user, and change his home directory to the folder where his stuff is already.

No such luck, usermod wont allow me to create that directory, it already exists.

$ sudo usermod -m -d /public_html/user user
  usermod: directory /public_html/user exists

I looked through the man page but did not see an immediate solution to this problem.

Solution

The message is only informational - the change should be accepted regardless.

Ex. given

$ getent passwd testuser
testuser:x:1001:1001:,,,,[email protected]:/home/testuser:/bin/sh

then

$ sudo mkdir /home/foo 
$ sudo usermod -m -d /home/foo testuser
usermod: directory /home/foo exists

however the home directory was successfully changed

$ getent passwd testuser
testuser:x:1001:1001:,,,,[email protected]:/home/foo:/bin/sh

And just to be sure:

$ su - testuser
Password: 
$ pwd
/home/foo

Comments

[Rinzwind]

Ehm, sorry but no. Just no. The horror stories I can tell where a windows admin decides to open /home/ as share where the user shift-deletes the files starting with a dot. Users need to be in /home and outside a webserver. You should create a symlink in /home/$USER/, force the user into that folder and connect that to /public_html/user