Procedure for migrating user accounts to new system ?

[Lowell Gilbert]

Nelis Lamprecht <nlamprecht at gmail.com> writes:

> On 05 Jul 2005 16:44:02 -0400, Lowell Gilbert
> <freebsd-questions-local at be-well.ilk.org> wrote:
> > Nelis Lamprecht <nlamprecht at gmail.com> writes:
> > 
> > > What is the correct procedure to follow for migrating user accounts
> > > from one FreeBSD 4.x system to a new FreeBSD 4.x system ? We're
> > > sticking to 4.x due to legacy issues(Netware) in case I get asked.
> > > Didn't see answer to this in the FAQ's or Handbook and google answers
> > > seem sketchy.
> > 
> > The FAQ entry titled "How do I move my system over to my huge new
> > disk?" should be apropos.
> > 
> 
> Unfortunately it doesn't. I specifically said "user accounts" because
> that's the only thing I want to move over to the new system. Using
> dump and restore wouldn't be applicable in this scenario as many
> things in the file systems are different. I was thinking more along
> the lines of copying over the password files and using pwd_mkdb to
> rebuild the db's but wasn't entirely sure about the whole process. For
> the home directories I'm just using rsync to copy over the data to the
> new system.

Okay, that's a little more information, so we're starting to get a
better picture.

In addition to home directories and passwords, you will need to move
over the group file.  You will probably also need to move the mail
spools, user crontabs, and "at" jobs.  You probably have local
configuration for applications installed on the system, so you will
need that too.  And anything that you allow users to write to as local
policy.

-- 
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area
		http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/