Backing up user accounts and groups.
 

I'm in the process of trialing a disaster recovery test and wanted a method of automating the backing up of user accounts and groups, then re-creating these accounts and groups after restoring from tape backup. What I had started doing is writing a Perl script then figured that maybe there ought to be a tool for exactly this purpose.

Is there such a tool and could someone point me to it?

Tia.

Dar could do it.

Read the Dar tutorial. Write a simple shell script to include:
cd /home (or wherever) to begin the backup there.
write the dar command line with options:
a) files (by extension) to not compress because they are already compressed.
b) folders to prune; i.e. include the folder in the directory tree, buy not the contents.
c) minimum file size to compress because some files are larger after compression than before compression.
d) many other options listed in the tutorial.

then,

cd /etc to include system config files.
write another command line for dar.

Then set up a cron job to run the backup at specified times.

Best thing about dar: the files are archived individually. If one is corrupt, you loose only that one and not the entire archive.

Dar can be set up to write to floppy/cd/dvd/tape/harddrive.