Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:15:08 +0100 From: "Daniel Bye" <danielby@slightlystrange.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: migrating users from one machine to another machine Message-ID: <20091002091507.GA19609@torus.slightlystrange.org> In-Reply-To: <200910012345.n91NjCcK048650@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th> References: <80173.56174.qm@web56206.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <200910012345.n91NjCcK048650@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th>
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--a8Wt8u1KmwUX3Y2C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Oct 02, 2009 at 06:45:12AM +0700, Olivier Nicole wrote: > Hi, >=20 > > What is the best way of migrating users from one machine (FreeBSD > > 6.3) to a new machine (FreeBSD 7.2)? >=20 > > I need to migrate their user account settings (shell, password, > > expiry etc) and also their data that they have in their directories. >=20 > Basically: >=20 > - you need to vipw on both machine and copy the user accounts from the > old machine to the new machine, that is fast; Or copy /etc/passwd from the old machine to the new one, and run=20 pwd_mkdb, which is essentially what vipw does anyway. And don't forget to sync your groups file as well! Dan >=20 > - you need to copy the home directories of your users from one machine > to the other, that can take long time if you have a lot of users > with a lot of data. >=20 > To be sure that there is no change being made by the users while you > are copying the data/accounts, you must disable any login during the > copy process. >=20 > You can practice copying the accounts while the machines are online > (login enabled); but be certain to do a final copy with the machine > offline (login disabled). >=20 > If copying data would take too long time and you cannot afford to put > the system offline for such a long period, you could install rsync on > both machines. >=20 > - keep machines online and rsync the users data from the old machine > to the new one. >=20 > - repeat rsyncing indefinitely, this will continue copying file that > has changed. >=20 > - put the machine offline and do a last rsync: that one should not > take too long as it will only copy what has changed since the very > last run of rsync. >=20 >=20 > Another way regarding the users' data, if they reside on a separate > hard disk, you can simply physically mount that hard disk in the new > machine. >=20 > Best regards, >=20 > Olivier > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.o= rg" --=20 Daniel Bye _ ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) - against HTML, vCards and X - proprietary attachments in e-mail / \ --a8Wt8u1KmwUX3Y2C Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.13 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkrFxJsACgkQixf5fBYiFmrx8ACg2vzxtL2U6dEyeLW1HcvtZ6Pm yVAAn3iaYHOoPeo7tK62IYLQu9QLdqYZ =7V5z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --a8Wt8u1KmwUX3Y2C--
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