I have recently been granted access to a machine at work. However, I have been having trouble setting up my development environment. Relevant information about the machine:

$ uname -a

Linux blackhawk2 3.2.0-41-generic #66-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 25 03:27:11 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I use OpenSSH to login into to this machine remotely. The thing I noticed immediately, was that my home directory was not set properly.

$ echo $HOME

/

Further my shell of preference is Bash, but:

$ echo $SHELL

/bin/csh

I am aware that the home directory and the default shell is setup in '/etc/passwd'. Inspecting this file I find:

glperez:x:1015:1015:glperez,,,:/home/glperez:/bin/bash

EDIT:
My home directory definitely exists and '/bin/bash' is working properly. Also, user authentication is handled over an authentication server of some kind. Unfortunately, this information is not readily available to me at this moment.

The strange thing is that on both occasions that I have tried to fix this problem, the first log in results in the expected behavior. That is, my home directory is correctly set and my shell is Bash. Upon logging in again, the problem shows up.