hi all,
I will be migrating my mail server from centos 4.8 to 6 when its released. Basically its just a number of users with their passwords. Their mail is downloaded to their clients and not stored on the server.
What is the most sensible or correct way to migrate ALL the users to the new system? Way in the past is was just perhaps copy the /etc/passwd file but I know thats not the case anymore. how do I easily recreate their account names etc... on the new machine.
Thanks, for any advice.
Jerry
2010/12/22 Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com:
hi all,
I will be migrating my mail server from centos 4.8 to 6 when its released. Basically its just a number of users with their passwords. Their mail is downloaded to their clients and not stored on the server.
What is the most sensible or correct way to migrate ALL the users to the new system? Way in the past is was just perhaps copy the /etc/passwd file but I know thats not the case anymore. how do I easily recreate their account names etc... on the new machine.
cp&paste correct entries from passwd and shadow files + copy files?
-- Eero
Greetings,
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com wrote:
hi all,
hmm..
scp <oldbox>:/etc/passwd <brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow
YMMV
Regards
Rajagopal
2010/12/22 Rajagopal Swaminathan raju.rajsand@gmail.com:
Greetings,
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com wrote:
hi all,
hmm..
scp <oldbox>:/etc/passwd <brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow
It's possibly better way only to cp&paste normal usernames, not internal daemons and so on.
-- Eero
Greetings,
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Eero Volotinen eero.volotinen@iki.fi wrote:
2010/12/22 Rajagopal Swaminathan raju.rajsand@gmail.com:
scp <oldbox>:/etc/passwd <brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow
It's possibly better way only to cp&paste normal usernames, not internal daemons and so on.
I did not quite understand the phrase "internal daemons and so on". Could you elucidate further please...
I alluded to the names of four files which matter in the context.
Regards,
Rajagopal
On 12/22/10 4:26 AM, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
Greetings,
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Eero Volotineneero.volotinen@iki.fi wrote:
2010/12/22 Rajagopal Swaminathanraju.rajsand@gmail.com:
scp<oldbox>:/etc/passwd<brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow
It's possibly better way only to cp&paste normal usernames, not internal daemons and so on.
I did not quite understand the phrase "internal daemons and so on". Could you elucidate further please...
I alluded to the names of four files which matter in the context.
On CentOS 5, uids up to 500 are reserved for the system and will belong to various installed packages. 501 and up should be the users you installed locally.
Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
Greetings,
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com wrote:
hi all,
hmm..
scp <oldbox>:/etc/passwd <brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow
YMMV
Regards
Rajagopal _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi,
Be aware that if you are doing this between different releases 4.x to 5.x for instance you stand a good chance of breaking your system as the systems account set up by the installer may well differ between the two releases. It is safer to extract the users that you have added to the system from the password and shadow files and to append the resulting files to the new system's password and shadow files.
ChrisG
What is the most sensible or correct way to migrate ALL the users to the new system? Way in the past is was just perhaps copy the /etc/passwd file but I know thats not the case anymore. how do I easily recreate their account names etc... on the new machine.
When transitioning mail servers, I've always done this by writing a perl/PHP script to parse the passwd files and create "user only" passwd/shadow, group, gshadow, etc. files and then append those to the new system. For most recent RH based distros, users start at either 100 or 500, with the lower numbers reserved for system/daemon accounts. Then you can copy over the emails with rsync with the numeric IDs option set and it will all "just work".
My approach requires some programming knowledge; I don't understand why there isn't a standard set of scripts to use for transitioning mail servers; there may be.
Good luck!
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 2:36 AM, Benjamin Smith lists@benjamindsmith.com wrote:
What is the most sensible or correct way to migrate ALL the users to the new system? Way in the past is was just perhaps copy the /etc/passwd file but I know thats not the case anymore. how do I easily recreate their account names etc... on the new machine.
When transitioning mail servers, I've always done this by writing a perl/PHP script to parse the passwd files and create "user only" passwd/shadow, group, gshadow, etc. files and then append those to the new system. For most recent RH based distros, users start at either 100 or 500, with the lower numbers reserved for system/daemon accounts. Then you can copy over the emails with rsync with the numeric IDs option set and it will all "just work".
Beware the user "nobody", and a lot of carelessly built vendor software that adds a user, but fails to make that user a "system" user. I just ran into this headlong with the latest NX software from www.nomachine.com.
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Benjamin Smith -
Chris Geldenhuis -
Eero Volotinen -
Jerry Geis -
Les Mikesell -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
Rajagopal Swaminathan