How to transfer SGI UNIX user on LINUX server

[john D_3]

Hi,

I am transfering all the data from SGI to Linux server. I also need to transfer all the 800 users from SGI to linux with same passwords. Is there any simple way to transfer them on linux (Fedora)?.

Thanks

[Steven E. Protter]

probably not.

Fedora uses md5 encryption for passwords.

Even if SGI uses the same method it may not work.

Between Fedora machines and Red Hat for that matter, I transfer users by copying the relavvent sections of /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow

then cat passwd >> /etc/passwd etc

If that doesn't work, you may be better off with reading a copy of the passwd file from SGI and use awk to get the user name.

Then with a script you can passwd -f the new account and set a temporary password that the users have to change at first login.

useradd to add the user.

SEP

[john D_3]

Thanks for your reply.

Could someone give me an example of this kind of script? I dont know how to handle this situation in a script

Thanks

[Mogens Kjaer]

If you only have a few users on the Linux box,
you can change the authentication used
on it to that of the SGI machine.

Use the authconfig program, and remove
the MD5 password and shadow password
option.

You must immediately after this set
the password for the root account, else you
won't be able to log in any more! The passwords
for other Linux users should be set as well.

Then you can simply append the 800 users from
the /etc/passwd file from the SGI machine to
the /etc/passwd file on the Linux box.

However, this gives quite a low security,
so you should at leastreenable shadow passwords
after this. I'm not sure if the authconfig
program automatically moves the passwords
from the passwd file into the shadow file,
else you can use the pwconv program for
this.

Note, you can't automatically convert
between md5 and not-md5 passwords.

man authconfig
man pwconv

gives more information.

[Ermin Borovac]

I think that although Fedora Linux uses MD5 passwords by default it will successfully authenticate DES (standard UNIX crypt algorithm) encrypted passwords. This means that you should be able to simply copy user info from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow on SGI box to your Linux server without any password conversion.

Next time users change passwords on Linux server, passwords will be encrypted using MD5 algorithm.