diff -p -up mc-4.6.2/src/main.c.homedir mc-4.6.2/src/main.c
--- mc-4.6.2/src/main.c.homedir	2009-05-22 11:27:11.000000000 -0300
+++ mc-4.6.2/src/main.c	2009-05-22 11:52:10.000000000 -0300
@@ -2148,6 +2148,8 @@ main (int argc, char *argv[])
     /* Check whether we have UTF-8 locale */
     char *lang = getenv("LANG");
     size_t len = 0;
+    struct stat s;
+    char *mc_dir;
 
     if ( lang )
 	len = strlen(lang);
@@ -2215,6 +2217,16 @@ main (int argc, char *argv[])
 
     init_curses ();
 
+    /* create home directory */
+    /* do it after the screen library initialization to show the error message */
+    mc_dir = g_strconcat (home_dir, MC_BASE, (char *) NULL);
+    canonicalize_pathname (mc_dir);
+    if ((stat (mc_dir, &s) != 0) && (errno == ENOENT)
+	&& mkdir (mc_dir, 0755) != 0)
+	message (D_ERROR, _("Warning"),
+		    _("Cannot create %s directory"), mc_dir);
+    g_free (mc_dir);
+
     init_xterm_support ();
 
 #ifdef HAVE_SUBSHELL_SUPPORT