Move users from old system

JohnnyGTO · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 91

I have a system with mandrake on 2 hard disks, I have a third which now boots Gentoo 1.4rc1. I can mount the older two under the Gentoo system.

What is the fastest cleanest way to move users and maintain their uin, passwords and /home directories off the older disks?

What I would like to do is have a nice clean migration so no one see's any diffence and I end up with a cleaner, leaner OS.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20588

/etc/passwd defines user IDs and /etc/group defines group IDs. Basically, the info on the Gentoo system would have to match the others systems for this to work 'easily'. RH Box, uid 200 = Joe Blow, then have the Gentoo box recognize him the same way.

Of course, you could just add new users and chown/chgrp their files, but that is a bit more involved.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

In my case, I cut and paste "user" portions of /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group from the RedHat installation to the Gentoo one to sync them up. They typically are towards the end of the relevant files. IIRC, RedHat starts its user numbering from 500 and creates individual groups for each user with the group name being the same as username. These can be brought over intact to Gentoo.

JohnnyGTO · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 91

So if I merge the user/group data of interest and then copy /home /var/spool/mail /what ever else the ownership should remain intact.

Do I need to recreate passwords if we are using shadowed passwords ?

kashani · Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2002 6:45 pm Post subject: editting shadow passwd files

JohnnyGTO · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 91

Thanks I will try this and write up the results :-)

BTW interesting choice of avitars - he met his end not far from here under some rather strange circumstances.

kashani · Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2002 9:22 pm Post subject: who shot bob crane?