server rebuilds and disaster recovery

[Philip Hallstrom]

> this weekend, im going to have to rebuild my 6.0 server in order to
> recover from a faulty disk (i have to eliminate a RAID1 array, and break
> rebuild the RAID5 with one more disk).
>
> all my daemons and whatnot, im pretty good at recovering.  sendmail,
> apache, mysql, etc, shouldnt be a problem.
>
> what i think i need help with is, what is the best way to recover my
> previous system's user accounts?  this time around my server is going to
> go from piece-by-piece updates, to a full buildworld before i build all
> the daemons.
>
> can someone recommend a good way to recover my users, or dissertate how
> they go about doing it successfully?  also, any tips outside of users that
> you think i might benefit from in a rebuild/redeploy, would also be
> appreciated!

Maybe I'm not fully understanding, but why wouldn't you just backup 
/etc/passwd (and all it's related master and db files), etc/group, heck, 
/etc/ in general, then everyone's home directories, /var/cron/tabs and 
/var/mail (or wherever you store their inbox)

??