hi all, I will be migrating my mail server from centos 4.8 to 6 when its released. Basically its just a number of users with their passwords. Their mail is downloaded to their clients and not stored on the server. 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. Thanks, for any advice. Jerry
2010/12/22 Jerry Geis <geisj at pagestation.com>:> hi all, > > I will be migrating my mail server from centos 4.8 to 6 when its released. > Basically its just a number of users with their passwords. Their mail is > downloaded to their clients > and not stored on the server. > > 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.cp&paste correct entries from passwd and shadow files + copy files? -- Eero
Greetings, On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Jerry Geis <geisj at pagestation.com> wrote:> hi all, >hmm.. scp <oldbox>:/etc/passwd <brand new CentOS 6 Box geewiz>:/etc/passwd ditto /etc/gshadow,/etc/groups, /etc/gshadow YMMV Regards Rajagopal
> 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! -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.