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Date:      Fri, 12 Sep 1997 10:00:10 -0500 (CDT)
From:      FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd@webnology.com>
To:        f0rky <f0rky@usa.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: mailserver
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.3.96.970912094909.5861A-100000@mercury.webnology.com>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970912190125.00698114@mail.dnet.net.id>

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On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, f0rky wrote:

>  need some advices on doing :
> 	a. we have a server  that doing web-server, DNS, and mailserver
> 	b. now, we want to split the job, by creating a new mailserver
> 	machine .
> 	c. on our old server, we have already 1000+ users
> 	d. what's the easiest step to migrate to the new mailserver , 
> 	without bothering the users. If possible without creating 
> 	new accounts on the new mailserver ?

Do your users have shell accounts on the current server? If they do,
you're going to have a slight headache on yur hands no matter what you do.
You're going to need consistent passwords on both machines (the current
server and the mailhost), and a way to change the passwords concurrently
(or some reasonable facsimile thereof) on both machines. This wouldn't
necessarily be *that* bad if the users had shell accounts on the mailhost
as well as the current server, but as it is, you're probably going to want
to change their shells to something like /nonexistent on the mailhost.

*So*, the way I see it, you have two options:

1) Install NIS+ or some similar form of brain damage to keep passwords
   consistent on both hosts without granting shell access to the
   mailhost.

2) Use a shell script that periodically copies your /etc/master.passwd
   and runs it through an awk program to change all user shells to
   /nonexistent (making sure not to do so for accounts like "root"). The
   script will also copy the new file to the mailhost (via scp), and run
   pwd_mkdb -p on it (via ssh). This seems like a disgusting hack to me,
   though :)

I dunno, anyone else have any ideas? Mine really seem to suck pretty bad.

Cheers,
Mick






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