Transferring users between servers
 

I can't imagine this question hasn't been asked before, but a search turned up nothing.

I just did a new install, and I need to have all "linux users" on my old machine transferred to the new machine.

I don't want to have to sit at the commandline doing useradd/passwd for a few hundred users.

Thx.

Same distro?

/etc/group
/home/user directory
/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow
/root

don't transfer the system accounts though - just the usres - and do do group before the home directories

Think that's all you need

How odd :}

Maybe we should build a thesaurus in for the search-terms ;}



http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nother-394669/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...se-9.1-247221/




Cheers,
Tink

True, the search terms to matter. My search term "transfer linux users", "transfer linux accounts" didn't help.

You can use Webmin to export any or all users from one system to another. Works very well.

Yes, same distro and version.

I transferred the files you suggested excluding system accounts. On reboot, I tried login in using one of the accounts, and this is the error I received:

--------------------- BEGIN ----------------------
The files that contain your preference settings are currently in use.

You might be logged in to a session from another computer, and the other login session is using your preference settings files.

You can continue to use the current session, but this might cause temporary problems with the preference settings in the other session.

Do you want to continue?
----------------------- END -----------------------

I clicked to continue, and yet more errors resulted.

None of the following contain duplicates for that account...
/etc/group
/home/user directory
/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow

so I'm not sure how come the files are in use.

Anyway, I've copied all original files back. I guess I'll just add the files manually for now. Maybe I'll have better luck in future.

I used webmin to export and import users. I still got the errors.

The problem is with my system, not the process of transferring users.

Thanks for your help.

I went ahead and did a fresh install just to convince myself that user transfers between machines works.

The transfer went flawlessly using webmin. The good thing about using webmin is that it gives you an easy way to exclude system accounts.

I thank everybody who responded to my post.