UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am very new to Unix and am using SunOS 5.7. I have created a new Unix account named "oracle" using the useradd utility, and placed it in the /users directory.

I am able to log in as "oracle", but now I can't see anything in the users directory! I used the
ls | ws -l
command to count the number of files in the users directory and it outputted 0.

I don't understand how I can log in with this Unix account and not be able to find the folder.

I also tried this using the Root account and the same problem occurs. There are other accounts in the users directory and I can finger them, but I can't find the folders.

Actually, I am looking for the "oracle" .profile file and it's not shown when I
ls -la
so I figured it might have something to do with the problem above.

PLEASE HELP!! THANKS!

If you type ls -la in a directory and nothing shows up then there is nothing in the directory. What do you see when you type pwd? Try copying the .profile from another users home directory into oracles home.
If the other username is chuckb, type this;
cp ~chuckb/.profile ~oracle

Right. The <b>ls</B> command will not show dot files (i.e. your .profile file) so when you do an <B>ls | wc -l</B> you will not count the dot files. As 98 points out, you must do an <B>ls -a | wc -l</B> to count dot files too.