Dear ALl, I have the following live setup . Centos 5.1 running as a Mail and DNS server with the following software Sendmail ver MailScanner ver squirrel mail clam av spamassassin mailwatch we have about 250 mail users all with no shell and every thing is working perfectly fine now i wd like to know the following . 1) if i have a copy of my /etc/passwd file and the /etc/skel/shadow file and if my current HDD crashes .. now if i make a new centos server with all the above software and jus copy the password n shadow file in the right directories will all the users able to login into the system as before. or is anything more required to be done. To explain more clearly if my current hdd crashes i can get up a new centos machine but creating all the 250 + users wd be a big problem specially the passwords. 2) i would like to also know about MX records i mean DNS server having MX with same priority n MX with different priority i right now have a primary n secondary mail server that is dns server with different MX records and its workin fine if i have 2 servers with same MX priority do i need to create the smae users on both my centos servers so tht if one server fails othe one is operational . i do presume the above is corect or is there any other way apprecite your help regards Fabian -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.