Manage default home directory permissions with adduser vs. useradd

I want to set home directory permissions for newly created users to 0750. Instead of having to manually chmod 0750, I found out I could edit this behavior in /etc/adduser.conf:

DIR_MODE=0750

Now here's a more tricky question. I have to create a series of users without shell access. What I'd usually do is something like this:

# useradd -m -g users -s /bin/false -c "abc" abc
# useradd -m -g users -s /bin/false -c "xyz" xyz

Unfortunately my DIR_MODE=0750 directive is not operative, and these users' home directories get created with default 0755 permissions.

Any idea if there's a secret trick or switch so they're directly created with 0750 permissions?

1 Answer

You could just stick with adduser:

# adduser --shell /bin/false --gid  --gecos abc abc

As another alternative, edit /etc/login.defs which is the config file for useradd and set

UMASK 027

which should give you 0750 permissions on the users home directory when you create it with the useradd command.

answer Jun 16, 2014 by Ramakrishnan

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