[fedora] moving users/groups

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 12:04 +0100, Øyvind Lode wrote:
> hi all
> 
> i'm planning to reinstall my fedora server.
> i'm now running fc1 on this server and i'm gonna delete that installation
> and install fc3.
> 
> i have taken backup of all important config files like httpd.conf,
> vsftpd.conf etc.
> i have also backed up all user data in /home to a tar.bz2 file.
> 
> the only thing i miss is the user accounts...
> 
> if i bakup /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/gshadow and after
> installing fc3 copies these files to the new server will i then have all the
> users (with their passwords) on the new server?
> 
> i will also restore the tar.bz2 file including all the user data.
> 
> something tells me that this won't work since i use md5 encrypted passwords
> (shadow)...
> 
> øyvind
> 

That has worked for me in the past.  It should as long as you restore
the password files before you restore the /home directory.

Just as a note for future reference.....  If you have /home on its own
partition then this process will be less painful in the future.
>