Josh Hope wrote:

> It's becoming frustrating :) Out of all the great minds out there, 
> there's gotta be an answer *somewhere*.

I haven't been following this too closely, so apologies if you've seen
these before...

 + Can you cd to the home directory (as any user)?  If so, the following
   will print out all the intermediate directories:

	#!/bin/sh

	dir=`pwd`

	while [ $dir != "/" ]; do
		ls -ldo $dir
		dir=`dirname $dir`
	done

   I don't know if this will give us any hints we haven't seen before.

 + Are all users with directories off /home effected?  Ie, can you make
   a new home directory called /home/foo and set the effected user's
   home directory to that?

 + Can you make a new home directory called /hometest/foo and use that?

 + Have you fsck'd the filesystem recently - with "-f" to force a check?

Good luck!

Simon.