Copy User Accounts from Redhat 7.2 to Redhat 9.0
 

Hi All,


I have two servers on is old which is currently in production and is running 7.2 and i bought new server on which i have installed Redhat 9.0. Now i want to copy all those users on to this new system.

WHat all files i have to copy or merge like

/etc/group, /etc/password/, /etc/shadow and any more. what is gshadow do i have to copy that. Are there any other files that i have to copy except the data files like mail folders and home directories.

And are there any tools or methods to do this. Any easy ways.

Any help is really appreciated.

Thanks a lot,
naveen.

Your question implies that your server is used by a number of people, but all authentication is done locally, which sounds odd to me.

If you are actually maintaining several systems with identical accounts, you might want to consider using NIS for authentication, in which case moving the accounts just means setting the new box up as an NIS client.

If you are committed to moving the user accounts as you have described, I suggest that (after you do a backup) you turn off password shadowing, copy the user entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/groups to the new box, then turn shadowing back on.

Note that the /etc/skel (default user environment configuration) files will have changed between RH7.2 and RH 9.0, so your users will be missing out on some of the features the upgrade will provide new users. If your users are curmudgeons that carry around their own highly customized environment, then this won't matter.

If you only have a dozen users, I would be inclined to suggest that you just copy over the /etc/groups file, use useradd to create their accounts anew on the new box with their old uids and gids, leave the old box up for a few months as an NFS server - letting your users copy over the files that they want. Then shut the old box down, holding onto your backup.

I am sorry that i didnt mention that after i am migrating from the old server to the newone with a new OS (Redhat 9.0). SO it is like after i configure everything on the new server i will replace the new one in place of OLD. ANd my server is mainly Web Server and File Server. So the Users Use Samba to store files. Apart from that i have apache running with lots of PHP , Perl Applications ANd a Mailman mail server. So my main concern in this migration is the user accounts and there are lot of them i think.

thanks a lot

Howzit

well u will nee more thta just those files u mentioned as each user has a home dir and all their profiles and scripts get put into there. U have two ways in doing htis hte first is buy coping those files and replacing them on new server. Then u may tar cjvf /home and copy this file across then tar zjvf /home and replave current home dir. The other way to copy over the /home dir is buy doing a rsync which will replicate this data between the two servers and everything will be identical once that has been done u may switch old server off.

Hope this helps

chow