Red Hat

What is the best way to move all user, with permission etc... from a old linux redhat 5 to a new redhat 6 machine. It is as simple as coping the etc/passwd file etc.. ?

..and files in /etc/security like opassswd; not to mention the home directories.

Remember that the encrypted passwords will be held in /etc/shadow and if you have a password history, they are in /etc/security/opasswd as listed by blackrageous

Overall, it's probably safer to script up a process to read the /etc/passwd, /etc/group and other files to generate new users. Remember that files are actually owned by the UID, so you will need to keep them consistent to maintain file ownership.




Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK

yeah I accidently move a director, but as you said all the ownership info was duffed up, so plan was to move all the files etc/passwd,group,shadow etc.. and then tar ball the directories and move them into place, that should keep all the ownership, and permission in tact right?
Thanks all!

I just had to do something similar-
Instead of using tar, I used rsync. This way I could keep updating until the final cutoff.

Here is an example of something I used.Note that we had another directory under /export/home/XXXX, not at the previous level of just /export/home. This is done using root.

You can do a dry run by using the -n flag at the end of the command as well.

rsync -avzH --progress /export/home/XXXXXX (host name):/export/home/