"Synchronize" users/groups Post: 302604710

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Operating Systems HP-UX "Synchronize" users/groups Post 302604710 by methyl on Monday 5th of March 2012 06:33:50 PM

03-05-2012

Registered User

We have had to do this. At first it seemed impossible because the oldest users on the master system had UIDs which clashed with system users the backup system.

Do not embark on this sort of exercise without an Ignite backup and a full backup of your system and a decent amount of booked downtime.

To cut a long story short, and working on a non-Trusted system:

Used "vipw" on the master system to move any system accounts to be definitely before any user accounts in /etc/passwd. This is only needed if system software was installed after any user accounts. i.e. what normally happens.

Created a cross-reference table of before-and-after UIDs and changed every non-system UID to a new range well clear of the system accounts (I chose 1001+). The choice of 1001 for the base was because I did not have any UID higher than 1001 on the master system or the backup system. This is not trivial because after changing the passwd file with "vipw" it involves issuing the correct "find" and "chown" command for every file owned by every non-system user.

Once you have got all your user accounts in a section of /etc/passwd which definitely does not contain any system accounts you can copy files at will to your backup system and periodically replace the "user" section of the /etc/passwd file with the user section from your source system using "vipw" (which can be scripted).

I must stress again that this technique does not work at all on Trusted systems.

There was a hint earlier. Never delete a user account. Lock it, remove data files, whatever, but do not delete it from /etc/passwd. It will mess up you backup system big time the moment you allow two different users to have the same UID.

Imho. In a D.R. backup scenario, never let two different users have the same UID.

Last edited by methyl; 03-05-2012 at 07:39 PM..

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LEARN ABOUT BSD

adduser

ADDUSER(8)						      System Manager's Manual							ADDUSER(8)

NAME

       adduser - procedure for adding new users

DESCRIPTION

       A  new  user must choose a login name, which must not already appear in /etc/passwdor /etc/aliases.  It must also not begin with the hyphen
       (``-'') character.  It is strongly recommended that it be all lower-case, and not contain the dot (``.'') character, as that tends to  con-
       fuse  mailers.	An  account  can  be added by editing a line into the passwd file; this must be done with the password file locked e.g. by
       using chpass(1) or vipw(8).

       A new user is given a group and user id.  Login's and user id's should be unique across the system, and often across a  group  of  systems,
       since  they  are used to control file access.  Typically, users working on similar projects will be put in the same groups.  At the Univer-
       sity of California, Berkeley, we have groups for system staff, faculty, graduate students, and special groups for large projects.

       A skeletal account for a new user "ernie" might look like:

	      ernie::25:30::0:0:Ernie Kovacs,508 Evans Hall,x7925,642-8202:/a/users/ernie:/bin/csh

       For a description of each of these fields, see passwd(5).

       It is useful to give new users some help in getting started, supplying them with a  few	skeletal  files  such  as  .profile  if  they  use
       "/bin/sh",  or .cshrc and .login if they use "/bin/csh".  The directory "/usr/skel" contains skeletal definitions of such files.  New users
       should be given copies of these files which, for instance, use tset(1) automatically at each login.

FILES

       /etc/master.passwd  user database
       /usr/skel	   skeletal login directory

SEE ALSO

       chpass(1), finger(1), passwd(1), aliases(5), passwd(5), mkpasswd(8), vipw(8)

BUGS

       User information should (and eventually will) be stored elsewhere.

4th Berkeley Distribution					 October 23, 1996							ADDUSER(8)