# 8. Automatic home directory creation \[optional]

When a user logs into a system for the first time, their directory may not exist. If you want the system to automatically create the user's home directory upon first login, you can use the `pam_mkhomedir.so` PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules for Linux). This not only creates the user's home directory, but also populates the directory with important files (`.bashrc`, etc), changes the ownership, and sets the home directory permissions.   As "root",  the following command will append the `pam_mkhomedir.so` options to your `/etc/pam.d/common-session`.

`echo "session optional pam_mkhomedir.so" >> /etc/pam.d/common-session`


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