Nifty Hat Mitch wrote: > If you login and $HOME as established in /etc/passwd > is not there bad things happen. In some systems you will > be given / or /tmp as a home dir. In other systems you > cannot login at all. On the other hand, given that the original concept was to mount the home directory *at* /home/username (see the title), if the filesystem is not mounted, all you will get is the empty directory. It is quite possible to put a few scratch login files there (so you have a basic environment available when the mount fails): under normal circumstances, they will be hidden by the mounted filesystem. But you shouldn't need *any* files in /home/username just to log in. James. -- E-mail address: james | "Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, @westexe.demon.co.uk | indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." | -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times