On 3/24/2011 8:04 AM, Les Mikesell wrote: > On 3/23/2011 10:45 PM, Todd Cary wrote: >> I plan to make my current Centos 4 HD a slave and install Centos >> 5.5 on a new HD (master). Then comes the challenge of of moving >> all of my /home/"user" data to the new master. I have some >> preliminary questions: >> >> Is this a good strategy for installing Centos 5.5: keep the >> Centos 4 on a slave disk? > It's a reasonable approach if you only have one computer. Just pick the > new 1st drive only (and remember your old one is already on the 2nd > controller) in the installer. > >> Will the Centos 5.5 detect the slave disk (Centos 4)? > It will see it at the hardware level but not do anything with it. You'll > need to figure out the device name or label for the partition (and > Centos5 will probably call it /dev/sd? instead of hd) and mount it > somewhere. You should also be able to configure a dual boot if you wanted. > For now, the Centos 4 disk is disconnected...playing it safe. Later I'll activate the HD as a slave. >> Is there a way to move the users, groups and passwords from one >> disk to the new Centos 5.5? > The files /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, and /etc/gshadow have > this information. But don't just copy them over. The accounts below > uid 500 belong to the system and may be different between versions or > depending on the installed software. You can edit your old entries that > you have added into the new corresponding files. Or, for a small number > of users, just 'adduser -u uid login_name', then 'passwd login_name' to > set the password. Actually, there are less than 12 users, as I recall, so manually setting them up will be the easiest. >> IT departments must have servers go down or want to install a new >> version of Linux and have the same challenges. > Normally if there are enough machines/users for this to be a problem, > there would be a central authentication mechanism like LDAP or active > directory set up. Servers for things other than direct login or file > mapping often don't have many real users, though. Yes, that makes sense. Of course, what happens if there is a need to bring up a new box for the authentication? Onward.... Todd -- Ariste Software Petaluma, CA 94952 http://www.aristesoftware.com