Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 06:45:12 +0700 (ICT) From: Olivier Nicole <Olivier.Nicole@cs.ait.ac.th> To: aaflatooni@yahoo.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: migrating users from one machine to another machine Message-ID: <200910012345.n91NjCcK048650@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th> In-Reply-To: <80173.56174.qm@web56206.mail.re3.yahoo.com> (message from Aflatoon Aflatooni on Thu, 1 Oct 2009 12:20:06 -0700 (PDT)) References: <80173.56174.qm@web56206.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
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Hi, > What is the best way of migrating users from one machine (FreeBSD > 6.3) to a new machine (FreeBSD 7.2)? > I need to migrate their user account settings (shell, password, > expiry etc) and also their data that they have in their directories. Basically: - you need to vipw on both machine and copy the user accounts from the old machine to the new machine, that is fast; - 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. 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. 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). 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. - keep machines online and rsync the users data from the old machine to the new one. - repeat rsyncing indefinitely, this will continue copying file that has changed. - 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. 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. Best regards, Olivier
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