[ILUG] Question about transferring system

[Conor Wynne]

On Tue, 2004-04-13 at 21:40, Michael Treacy wrote:
> My server went pear-shaped about 2 weeks ago. I'm currently about to install 
> Linux on a new system, but I have a question:
> 
> How easy is it to transfer the old user accounts to the new system? Or can 
> I?
> 
> Just to help any prospective repliers, there are a few things you should be 
> aware of:
> 
> My old system was running SuSE 6.4 (new system will be SuSE 9.0)

Not an issue, you will be copying the data to the raided /home anyway.

> My old system didn't have any backup facilities - cd-rw, tape, etc. (new one 
> does!!!)
> I've established that my old hard disk is still in perfect condition. (it 
> was a 6GB IDE drive)
> New system will be dual-120GB disks incorporating RAID

Good idea, backups are cool ;--0

> So, can I mount the old disk on the new system and copy over the user 
> directories? I'm sure I also need copies of the /etc/passwd files and some 
> other hidden files.

I'm sure there is a way better way than the one I am going to describe
but...

Add the old drive to the system after installing suse on the new box.
You may want to useradd all the users and possibly groups they may
belong to.
Mount the old disk and copy all the user home directories to their
relevant places under /home.

Then chown -R user:group for each of the users. I'm sure you can add
variables to do it all in one command ;--)

Conor.