gnome-initial-setup: useradd fails (exit 12) when /var/home/<user> already exists on disk

[hanthor]

Problem

gnome-initial-setup fails at the final user-creation step with:

accounts-daemon: useradd: cannot create directory /var/home/james
gnome-initial-setup: Error saving data: Failed to create user 'james':
  GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.Accounts.Error.Failed: running '/usr/sbin/useradd' failed: Child process exited with code 12

GIS then times out, the done marker (/var/lib/gnome-initial-setup-done) is never written, and GIS re-runs on every subsequent boot — creating an infinite loop.

Root Cause

shadow-utils 4.15.0 (EL10) calls mkdir(/var/home/<user>) in create_home_dir(). If the directory already exists (e.g. from a previous install on the same disk), mkdir returns EEXIST and shadow-utils exits with code 12 (E_HOMEDIR) rather than skipping creation gracefully.

This is reproducible when:

• Installing Yellowfin onto a disk that previously had a Yellowfin (or any Linux) install with /var/home/<username> already present
• The /var partition/directory is not wiped by the installer

Environment

• Image: ghcr.io/tuna-os/yellowfin:gnome50
• gnome-initial-setup-50.0-2.el10
• shadow-utils-4.15.0-11.el10
• selinux-policy-43.1-1.el10 (enforcing)
• gnome50-el10-compat-1.2.6-1.el10 installed — SELinux modules present, no AVC denials observed

Workaround

touch /var/lib/gnome-initial-setup-done

This prevents GIS from re-running. The user then needs to be created manually via useradd.

Proposed Fixes

Option A — accounts-service / GIS wrapper (preferred)

Before calling useradd -m, check if the home directory already exists. If it does, pass -M (no home creation) and then chown/restorecon the existing directory instead.

This could be a patch to our gnome-initial-setup spec or a wrapper script around useradd.

Option B — shadow-utils patch

Backport the upstream shadow-utils fix that handles EEXIST gracefully in create_home_dir(). Newer versions (4.17+) handle this case.

Option C — tuna-installer

Have the tuna-installer wipe /var/home during a fresh install so GIS always has a clean slate.

Notes

• gnome-initial-setup-first-login.service was skipped (ConditionEnvironment=XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user unmet) — so the copy-worker never ran either
• F43 ships GIS 49.0; our COPR has GIS 50.0 (correct for gnome50 variant, matches F44)
• The brew-setup.service bakes /var/home/linuxbrew into the image — this is unrelated but confirms /var/home is pre-populated before first boot