[ALUG] Wierd problem when creating new users, .profile and .bashrc not executing

[Chris G]

I have something not right on my xubuntu 8.10 system.  When I create
new users using 'useradd <username> they are created OK but don't get
a home directory.  I'm sure the default used to be to create a home
directory and to copy its contents from /etc/skel but it's not doing
that.  If I do 'useradd -m <username>' then I get the files copied
from /etc/skel but they don't get executed on logging in to the new
account.

Even if I log in to the newly created user and try and execute the
files I get a really odd error message:-

    $ . .profile
    .: 13: .profile: not found
    $

The file .profile does exist:-

    $ ls -al
    total 32
    drwxr-xr-x  5 isbd isbd  4096 2008-12-21 20:23 .
    drwxr-xr-x 10 root root  4096 2008-12-21 20:24 ..
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 isbd isbd   220 2008-05-12 19:49 .bash_logout
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 isbd isbd  3115 2008-05-12 19:49 .bashrc
    drwx------  5 isbd isbd  4096 2008-12-19 20:13 Mail
    drwxr-xr-x  2 isbd isbd  4096 2008-12-19 20:11 .mutt
    drwxr-xr-x 25 isbd users 4096 2008-10-07 19:20 oldIsbd
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 isbd isbd   675 2008-05-12 19:49 .profile


Erk!  What have I done?  :-)

Existing users work fine.

    
-- 
Chris Green