user directory's are missing

[Hoopz]

I am new to linux and have been learning new commands etc. I am running ubuntu 10.04 at the moment. Anyway I used the commands useradd and passwd to create a new user and went to log in as that user and I got several errors looked like a home directory wasn't set up for that user. Isn't the useradd command suppose to take care of this?

[Hoopz]

Here are the errors when logging in as the user I created. I get three of them.

1st error: Could not update ICEauthority file /home/travis/.ICEauthority

2nd Error: There is a problem with the configuration server. (user/lib/libgconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256)

3rd Error: Nautilus could not create the following required folder: /home/travis/Desktop, /home/travis/.nautilus

then I am left at a blank desktop background and have to hit the reset button or do control alt f2 to get to a command line to shutdown the system

So my best guess is that the program that creates the user directories isn't working right but I am new to linux and I am not sure how to fix this

[ankspo71]

Hi,
I just glanced through the useradd man page and it says this:

-m, --create-home
Create the users home directory if it does not exist. The files and directories contained in the skeleton directory (which can be
defined with the -k option) will be copied to the home directory.

By default, no home directories are created.
You can see this information by typing man useradd in the terminal.

[sisco311]

From man useradd:

useradd is a low level utility for adding users. On Debian/Ubuntu, administrators should usually use adduser(8) instead.

EDIT: D'oh! ankspo71 beat me to it. :)

[Hoopz]

ah ha!! Guess I need to learn to use the man command as well. Thanks to both of you.