Can I copy one shell "zsh" from one server to another.
 

Hi Guys,


We are doing one production migration,
we have copied "/etc/shells" file form old to new server.
/etc/shells file contains below entries:-
but one shell is missing:-
[CODE]bash-3.2# ls -l /sbin/zsh
/sbin/zsh: No such file or directory
bash-3.2#

on my old prod server it is present and has no link;-
so can i copy this "zsh" shell from my old production server to new prod server ?

Will it cause any issue?

Please advise.

Thanks,

Manali

---------- Post added 04-26-13 at 10:19 AM ----------

System is Solaris 10

manalisharmabe,

If someone asked you the question you have asked us, how would you go about trying to solve it?


You have told us that you:

1) are doing one production migration
2) have copied "/etc/shells" file from old to new server
3) but one shell is missing /sbin/zsh
4) on my old prod server it is present and has no link


You have not told us:

A) exactly how you are doing the migration.
B) whether or not you copied the shells themselves over, only that you copied /etc/shells over.
C) why you mention that there is not a link on the old server
D) are there any differences between the hardware of the old server and the new server, or are
you simply moving from one physical location and another?


Please give us the details so we have a starting point to try to help you.

why not just install shells...?

I agree with Habitual. It would be a lot more straightforward to just install zsh on the new machine. It probably needs some extra libraries, so simply copying over the binary may not be enough to keep it running. On the other hand, if you don't have any users or scripts that actually use zsh, you can just delete its entry from /etc/shells on the new machine and be done with it.

I feel that usually the most appropriate way to answer a question is to stay in the context in which the question was asked, and within the scope of the original question.

But in this case I think the context itself may become more important to actually being helpful, than the question.

That's why it would be nice to how how the migration is being accomplished.

Dynamically linked libraries may be needed for plenty of binaries that could be copied over, not just the zsh.

Also, if pieces of things are being copied over, any package management environment may be invalidated. If you copy over a list of installed packages, but don't copy over all the installed components of those packages, the package list is not really valid.

I can more or less understand a desire not to have to spend time re-installing layers of updates that have already been installed.

So if the migration is just to new hardware at a single location, it might not be the worst idea to copy over the files, as long as the system can be made to still boot from the new drive, and in general if the copying is done in the right way. That's of course, IF the "Architecture" of the new machine is compatible with the old.

Otherwise the migration might be most safely accomplished by first installing on the new machine, the OS, any updates and optional packages, Applications etc., which were installed on the original system, then copying over any other data, User files, Application data, etc.

Agreed that having context is nice, but there are definitely right ways and wrong ways to do a server migration. Randomly copying files over (that will not be tracked by the package manager) does not seem like a good recipe for creating a stable system.

The OP still hasn't responded, so we don't know what approach is being taken to the migration. Just because one question was asked about copying the zsh over, doesn't mean that the OP is randomly copying files over.