Add a user with an already existing home directory

Question

I recently reinstalled Ubuntu. Since I had a separate partition for /home, I was able to keep my old files.

Now I need to add another user, let's say named "bob." The /home/bob directory already exists. How do I create the new user bob who has that as his home directory?

Will I be able to simply create the new user via the settings GUI or are there any pitfalls regarding file permissions, hidden configuration files, etc?

If it's pertinent, I upgraded Ubuntu 14.04.3 to 16.04. Also, my own account, which I created during the new installation, worked fine with the old home directory.

Answer 1

I solved it by the following:

# adduser --home /home/bob bob
# chown -R bob:bob /home/bob

Since the new user does not automatically own the old home directory, they are initially unable to login. So I had to use the second line.

Finally, there are still some glitches in the new account. I assume I will have to clear all of the cache and config files from the old home directory (~/.config, ~/.cache, and ~/.local/share it seems).

Answer 2

adduser bob --no-create-home --home /home/bob/ --uid [the_uid]

--help gives you all the possible flags you can use.

Answer 3

For those who use useradd as a habit, try this:

sudo useradd -s [your_shell_of_choice] -d /home/bob -M bob
sudo chown -R bob:bob /home/bob

• -d is equivalent to --home
• -M is equivalent to --no-create-home
• -s is usually followed by /bin/bash, but it's your choice

See also: useradd --help. Actually, you'll find it to be similar to adduser.