On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 2:36 AM, Benjamin Smith <lists at 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.