I have an older linux server and I want to move my 3000 users or so to a newer box. Can anyone tell me how the easy way to do this is, or at least point me in the right direction? Both servers use shadow passwords.

man dd
man tar
man scp
man dump
man restore
tar looks like to be the right choice for you!

But tar what? I guess I understand how to move the home directories, and /var/spool/mail/*, But what I don't get is how to get the user names and passwords over. Can I just move /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd to the new box and let 'er rip? Or will that cause problems?

Thanks,
-Mark

If the filesystem structure hasn't changed on the new box,
i.e. the home-dirs are in the same place as defined in your passwd, it should work fine. So tar the comlete home-dirs, the /var/spool/mail, /var/spool/news etc. and move them to the new box. Also copy your passwd and shaddow to the new box.

You don't tell, what systems you use on your new and old server. Will there be a new OS-Version on the new box? Or is it really a one-to-one copy of your old box? If it is a pure copy of the old server, there are more convienient ways to do a migration.

The real reason for the upgrade is this:
The main goal is to merge the users of two ISPs. One server has about 3000, the other server has less than 500. The smaller server was one that I had set up and ran. The bigger server is from a larger ISP that was bought by the same company that bought mine. It is pretty old and several things should be upgraded anyway, plus I know very little about it and that admin is gone and keeping his lips sealed because he didn't get the money he wanted.

Anyway, I have a new server that I will likely install RedHat 6.2 onto. I would think that the easiest way would be to copy the users from the large server to the new server first, since they will both run sendmail and otherwise are similar. Then, since my smaller server runs Qmail, I will probably just add my 500 users to the new box by hand, as I will have to deal with a handful of duplicates.

Now, as for OS changes, the older, larger box has some old version of Linux on it. It's from before I even new what Linux was. I'm told it is Linux, but here is the banner when I telnet in:


UNIX(r) POSIX Style Release 4.2 (my.hostname.here)

my.hostname.here login:


I really have no idea what OS this is, which, is my biggest reason for wanting to change it. The server has a few smaller problems, and we have the new box, so I might as well upgrade. I'm going to use the new box for email and radius authentication, and leave the webpages and such on the old box.

Hope that helps.

Thanks
-Mark

Nobody has any good thoughts on the subject?

--Mark

A lot of this depends on the end setup that you would like. If the new server is only going to be mail/radius you may not even want to copy the contents of /home. You should be able to copy the passwd and shadow files assuming that both *NIX versions involved use the same encrytion type. You may also want the group file. What is the output of `uname -a` on the "old" box?

[root@main /root]# uname -a
Linux main.keynet.net 2.0.30 #1 Tue Apr 22 10:49:45 EDT 1997 i686 unknown
[root@main /root]#


No, I want the home directories. I think what I'll do is run the ISPs home page on this server with apache and let everyone put their personal homepages in their home directories, and put all hosted sites on the other server. Otherwise, wouldn't I have to add and keep track of users on both servers?

I'm sorry from seeming so lame here, but this is something I've never done before and I can't find any documentation on it.

-Thanks
--Mark

I just discovered that the old server I'm trying to move users off of is running RedHat 4.2. Perhaps this can help you guys help me??

Thanks,
Mark

Do you offer shell accounts?

Well, everyone gets a home directory, but I don't allow users to telnet in. The only thing they users can really use the space for is hosting webpages. They have access to ftp pages into their home directories. A few users have actual pages and there are a few more that use the space to host pictures for their stuff on ebay....

You may want to just ditch the passwd files and have ftp, pop, etc authenticate out of a db such as MySQL.

mjakob,
Just ran across this a thought you might be interested.
They don't get into too much detail and I didn't get a chance to download the source, but it may be possible to get this program to sync the accounts.

http://freshmeat.net/releases/41370/

Hey, thanks man. I'll take a look at it. It might also server as a fix to some other issues I'm having.

Thanks,
-Mark

TRy the following steps:
*******************
1. [FROM_Linux /etc]#pwunconv /etc/passwd
2. [FROM_Linux /etc]#vi passwd
Find a way to copy&paste its content.

3. [TO_Linux /etc]#pwunconv /etc/passwd
4. [TO_Linux /etc]#vi passwd
Paste the content into the file

5. [TO_Linux /etc]#pwconv /etc/passwd
6. [FROM_Linux /etc]#pwconv /etc/passwd

Hope it will work if the password coding method are the same between two Linux box.