Moving user account info to a new server - advice please.
 

Hi all,

I've recently upgraded my main fileserver here at work to a newer machine with more resources, and I'm looking into cutting over to it within the next week.

I've never dealt with this before, so I apologize if it's simple, but I'm not sure on the best way to preserve the old user account database and it's associated file ownership permissions when I cut over to the new machine.

As far as files are concerned, I'm pretty sure that I can tar them up on the old server with the option to preserver numerical UID's, but as far as getting those UID's and passwords onto the new machine, I'm not sure how to proceed.

It's not as simple as copying over /etc/passwd, is it?

Thanks as always.

Not just /etc/password, here are a couple more I can think of.

/home/*
/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow
/etc/group

No it is not that simple. You need to copy /etc/shadow and /etc/group as well.