TRANSFERRING USERS BETWEEN TWO UNIX SERVERS

[Luk Vandenbussche]

Hello,
I have to transfer a passwd file with 800 users from a K370 to an rp5400.
Does anyone know's a good/working procedure for this job. I hope I don't have to type everything again.

Thanks

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

If "r"commands are available to you, rcopy the file from one server to the other. Otherwise ftp it or dump it to tape with tar and transfer it over that way.

Unless I'm missing something, this shouldn't be too difficult.

Pete

[harry d brown jr]

If it's a trusted system you will have to move /tcb

you need to move their HOME directories

/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/profile

and any other profiles (.profile, .cshrc) ...

You can use "rcp"

live free or die
harry

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

As well as passwd remember the relationship to the groups file.

Paula

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi
Perhaps you should not copy the passwd and as it is, "system" users (as root) may be different. Make a copy of passwd and group files on the original system. Edit the files, delete evrything exept for the "ordinary" users (and groups). Transfer the files to the new system, merge the files whith this systems passwd and group files (cat >>passwd).

How about home directorys, NFS-mounted? or are you going to copy these too.

[BFA6]

Hi,

You can copy across the /etc/passwd & /etc/group. Mount the /home as /home_new on your old server, then you can use find & cpio to copy all the home directories across.

Regards,

Hilary

[Shannon Petry]

If you have no security concerns, then configure NIS. Even with 2 nodes, these 800 users are then shared, which means no copying of passwd/group or /tcb.

Just make sure the homes are identical on both systems. Again if NIS is okay, then there should be no concern about NFS.

IF secrity is a problem, then install the secure shell packages available from HP. Secure copy supports wildcards, and transfers encrypted.

Regards,
Shannon

[Ted Ellis_2]

warning.. I would not just copy the passwd file straight off of a K370 to an rp5400.... copy it to /tmp or something like that.... compare the top entry for the root password carefully... especially the shell. If it is a different operating system.. ie. this is part of a system upgrade, you may find some differences in the root shell settings in the password file and it will be a bit challenging to back that out. Just be careful... you can mess things up assuming that one password file is just as good as another.

[Luk Vandenbussche]

Thanks all.

My fingers are very happy with this news.

[Wodisch]

Hi Luk,

why not use HP's "OpenSSH" and "rsync"?
"rsync" can use the "SSH" as transport tunnel, and is just so simple to use...
http://rsync.samba.org

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch

[Luk Vandenbussche]

problem solved