Hi there I am using Debian Lenny but I guess my question applies to any distro with applicable changes.

I would like a pointer to a script or utility I could use to enable me to backup all users on my current installed system and then use this data to automatically setup all these users on another system (could be a fresh installed system) basically port all users.

additional features that would be nice to have
-backup passwords
-home directory or more specifically www web directory
-database backup.


Any type of info would help as I can use this as reference to writting this magic script.

Hi Mike,

The info you supplied here is a tad meager.

While it holds true that all Linux distros are basically the same in
the way they hold user information (/etc/passwd & /etc/shadow) not all
will necessarily use the same numeric user-IDs for all (system-)users,
and will quite likely use different names for different daemons.

So a port/move from distro to distro may not be trivially possible,
and most likely not w/o some on a per-move basis coding.

That said:

You can get the user accounts out of /etc/passwd, and if you copy
the relevant lines from /etc/shadow across as well preserve passwords.

You'll need to make sure that there's no duplicate UIDs on the target
system, and that each user gets a UID that matches the ownership of
their home.

Home you can back up using tar.


To get answers regarding web & database you'll need to specify which
RDBMS you're using, and whether the users web pages are under ~/public_html
or somewhere else in the file-system.



Cheers,
Tink

Apologies, As I guess I was misunderstood. heres the clarification I did not mean I intend porting from distro to distro the reason I mentioned the distro issue was just to highlight that the possible answer could be based on a distro other than Debian and I would take relevant inter distro differences into account.

I am interested in porting to another physical machine with the same distro.

Regards Mick