Changing the default home directory

Change Default User Home Directory While Adding A New User

By default, when we create or add users to Linux System, user’s default home directory is created to /home. To change default directory to /opt/, we need to change few settings as mentioned below:

As the root user open /etc/default/useradd using your favorite editor.

[root@workbox dwmoar]# nano /etc/default/useradd

The default home directory defined by HOME variable, find line that read as follows: HOME=/home

useradd defaults file
GROUP=100
HOME=/home
INACTIVE=-1
EXPIRE=
SHELL=/bin/bash
SKEL=/etc/skel

and change it to read HOME=/opt Save and close the file.

Now you can add a user, using the useradd command in a console window as the root user:

   useradd username
   passwd -d userpassword 

Verify user information: NOTE: You will have to install the finger program through the Synaptic package manager.

   finger username 

Output: Login: username Name: username userpassword
Directory: /opt/username Shell: /bin/bash
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