Found out that this breaks some applications, the better way to do it is
In addition to symlink, on more recent distros and filesystems, as root you can also use bind-mount:
mkdir /home/username
mount --bind --verbose /extra-home/username /home/username
This is useful for allowing access "through" the /home directory to subdirs via daemons that are otherwise configured to avoid pathing through symlinks (apache, ftpd, etc.).
You have to remember (or init script) to bind upon restarts, of course.
An example init script in /etc/fstab
is
/extra-home/username /home/username none defaults,bind 0 0
usermod -m -d /newhome username
Ibrahim's comment on the other answer is the correct way to alter an existing user's home directory.
usermod -d /newhome/username username
usermod
is the command to edit an existing user.
-d
(abbreviation for --home
) will change the user's home directory.
usermod -m -d /newhome/username username
-m
(abbreviation for --move-home
) will move the content from the user's current directory to the new directory.
You can do it with:
/etc/passwd
Edit the user home directory and then move the required files and directories to it:
cp/mv -r /home/$user/.bash* /home/newdir
.bash_profile
.ssh/
Set the correct permission
chmod -R $user:$user /home/newdir/.bash*
In case other readers look for information on the adduser
command.
Edit /etc/adduser.conf
Set DHOME
variable
The accepted answer is faulty, since the contents from the initial user folder are not moved using it. I am going to add another answer to correct it:
sudo usermod -d /newhome/username -m username
You don't need to create the folder with username and this will also move your files from the initial user folder to /newhome/username folder.
From Linux Change Default User Home Directory While Adding A New User:
Simply open this file using a text editor, type:
vi /etc/default/useradd
The default home directory defined by HOME variable, find line that read as follows:
HOME=/home
Replace with:
HOME=/iscsi/user
Save and close the file. Now you can add user using regular useradd command:
# useradd vivek # passwd vivek
Verify user information:
# finger vivek
Source: Stackoverflow.com