[ILUG] duplicating rh users on a debian box

[Paul Jakma]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Hugh Mc Gauran wrote:

> 
> i want to duplicate about 700 users on a redhat box onto a new debian box
> the prob here is that uids in redhat start at 500 and in debian at 1000
> 
> can i just get away with changing UID_MIN value in login.defs to
> 500 from 1000 or is there more.. or can i just copy over the
> passwd ,group and shadow file over and leave it off. i intend to
> rdist /home from the old server onto the new one and run them
> concurrently for a week. just to test the new machine. I am going
> to export /home over nfs to the old box and have it as a pure
> login box. the new machine is setup with raid 5 and is more or
> less ready to go... i just need to sort out this prob with the
> uids..

you can cut and paste the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow entries.

copy the originals to somewhere. strip all but your users accounts
out of the copied files and then append (cat >>) these to your debian
passwd and shadow files. (make backups of all files before modifying
them!)

one caveat: i don't know if debian supports md5 encrypted passwords
that RedHat sometimes uses - if your version of debian doesn't then
you may need to either:

- tweak your pam config files to enable md5 support (if possible)
or
- reset all your users passwords

md5 passwords begin with $!$ (or was it !$! ?). so you can easily
tell if your redhat users have MD5 passwords, and if they do, you can
easily test whether your debian install supports them by pasting an
MD5 password into an existing debian account in passwd|shadow.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie
PGP5 key: http://www.clubi.ie/jakma/publickey.txt
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