Redhat to Debian: migrating a multi-user server
This is not a "Which is better, Red Hat or Debian?"
question, but a very specific question about a distro
migration of one specific box. I've done a lot of
research on this, and have found no answers particular
enough to my situation.
The box in question is still running RH 5.2 (with all
security patches, of course), and has had a very
active user base of about 175 shell accounts since it
went online in October of 1998. It has had very
impressive
uptime and performance records. However, it's been a
rather large headache to keep current, given Red Hat's
bugginess and lack of an update tool. [I know that RH
7.0 has an update agent, and I thought for about two
seconds about upgrading this box to 7.0 just for that
tool. But I tested that tool, and it is absolutely
_horrible_; it's nothing like as
easy/reliable/effective as apt-get, and RH 7.0 is much
buggier than my box currently is anyway.]
Now, to the migration: I'm actually migrating the
whole system to a different machine, so I don't have
the problem of having to change the distros on the
same machine on the fly. In fact, I've already got
the new box up and running with an up-to-date Debian
potato; it's just waiting for the users. Most of the
user migration is therefore very easy. Just tar up
the $HOME directories and /var/spool/mail, and copy
them to the new box, etc..
My main issue is getting user accounts over. It would
be very easy to copy the lines from my passwd, shadow,
and group files over to the potato box, but I'm
concerned about the fact that RH begins uids with 500,
while Debian begins with 1000. If I copied accounts
directly from passwd file to passwd file, I'd end up
with a bunch of Debian users with uids between 500 and
700. I've already tested this with several user
accounts, and it seemed to work fine; I'm just worried
about things breaking down the road.
My questions, then, are these: is there anything
about this situation that will make Debian break? Are
there debianized packages that rely on having normal
(i.e., non-system user) uids above 1000? Is there
anything
else about the migration of users that I need to be
worried about? I want this to be a very smooth
transition that takes place at 3am some night;
ideally, the less attentive users won't even know that
the change has taken place.
Thanks,
Belloc
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