/etc/passwd file migration

[Ted Mims]

I am merging /etc/passwd from a D270 10.20 box to a N4000 11i box. I "cat tmppasswd.txt >> passwd. When I try to log in using the accounts that were imported, it says login incorrect. Is there a different procedure I should use for it to bring the encrypted passwords in appropriately?

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

use vipw and save the file. The passwords should be reencrypted and then try to login.

hth,

Michael

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Actually it should have worked unless the old system was trusted where the encrypted passwords would be stored under /tcb/files/auth directory. You will need to copy those files too.

One more thing to check is to make sure there are no duplicate entries for logins. To verify try

#pwck
#grpck

and note the errors.

-Sri

[Ted Mims]

does 10.20 and 11i use different encryption methods? The passwd file on 10.20 has "*" in the passwd field while 11x has a string of characters. Would this be my problem?

[curt larson_1]

also if you have duplicate user id, the system will always use the password for the first entry it finds

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Ted,

Yes. It looks like 10.20 was a trusted system. You would need to untrust it to get back the encrypted passwords into /etc/passwd file. Take a copy of /tcb directory on it and then run

#/usr/lbin/tsconvert -r

Now capture the password entries for all the users that you want to migrate and then append them to your new system.

-Sri

[Bharat Katkar]

Ted,
Your old system is trusted. Go ahead as suggested by Shridhar.
Regards,

[Jeff_Traigle]

Is that something specific to 11i? I just finished a project that included merging password files from 10.01, 10.20, or 11.00 systems to 11.00 and had no such problems. All I did to merge them was pull the system accounts from the new 11.00 file and pull the user account entries from the other file using awk.

[Jeff_Traigle]

Ah... I don't type quickly enough. :)

Just so you understand, Ted (and anyone else who might not realize it)... When a system is converted to a trusted system, the encrypted password field in /etc/passwd is "locked" with the *... trusted authentication doesn't use the entry, but, when moved to a non-trusted system, this will never allow a login. It's a common method of disabling accounts and is the method utilized by HP for some of the system accounts that are locked by default.

[Ted Mims]

thanks to everyone who replied. Because I had already done a lot of work on the merge file (3 days of work) and did not want to convert and do it again. Instead, I took the earlier suggestion to copy the tcb directory over to the new system. That did the trick. Thanks again.