On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 15:06 -0700, Todd Cary wrote:
I have a new Centos installation that has an empty /home dir and there
are no users...just root. I want to move the home directory from
another server to the new one. At this time the old /home directory has
been tarred with "-prf". That will keep permissions which could be a
problem.
Is there a simple way to move the /home directory? And the non-system
users in the password and group files?
Yes, It's called NIS and NFS.
It makes it extremely easy and painless.
It may seem like I'm suggesting more work, but once you do it once your
network, you will never do it again. Even if you leave NIS and NFS
disabled, once you set them up, you can always start the services.
With NIS, merely setup your current server as an NIS master. Reference
the HOWTO (see TLDP.org). Now setup the new server as a slave. The
maps get pushed and now you have a copy of all essential UNIX
configuration files necessary (passwd, hosts, services, etc...). Merely
cat >> the maps into the new server's files and make it the master.
With NFS, just export /home from the old server with "no_root_squash"
for the new server IP, and mount it on the new one. Now you can move
(mv) things directly over from one /home to another.