On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 12:56 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > Craig White wrote: > > > always risky to edit /etc/passwd /etc/shadow & /etc/group manually. > > > > make backup copies first > > > > be certain to add the exact matching lines from /etc/passwd > > & /etc/shadow from the old versions to the new. > > > > I feel the obligation to add that if you were using LDAP for backend > > authentication, this would be a much simpler process. > > > > Craig > > > Making backups is always good advice. It is also a good idea to use > vipw and vigr to edit them. If you do not like using vi, you can set > EDITOR to your preferred editor first. The reason to use vipw > instead of using the editor directly is that it sets the locks so > you only have one program changing the file at a time. > > Thinking about it, it might be as easy to create a script that grabs > the user name and password out of the passwd and shadow files, and > feed it to useradd or adduser if they are only mail accounts. If the > UID changes, it should not be a problem if you are using tar or > rsync to move the mail files. (You need the correct options, and you > have to run as root.) They can match on user name instead of UID. > > If you need to preserve the UID and GID, you can grab that > information also, and feed it to useradd. But if you do not to do > it, this gives you a chance to "defragment" the UIDs and GIDs. ---- webmin <http://www.webmin.com> Users and Groups module has the ability to import a list of users or groups from files but you do have to combine the passwords from the old system's /etc/shadow into the old system's /etc/passwd into one file before you can import into webmin. The import format is very similar to /etc/passwd itself but on a RH system, the second field is a * which represents the entry in /etc/shadow whereas the import file would require that you substitute the password where the asterisk is. Craig
