[CentOS] preparing to migrating to new system

Sat Dec 25 07:36:58 UTC 2010
Benjamin Smith <lists at benjamindsmith.com>

> 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! 

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