Re: Redhat to Debian: migrating a multi-user server
I have seen a situation where a system that began on Slackware was
migrated to Debian years ago. Several Debian upgrades have been done
since then. There are user ids between 500 and 100 and there hasn't been
any problems. Hopefully this isn't an accident going somewhere to happen.
One idea might be to do a search and replace on the passwd file, placing a
1 (or 2, etc) in front of the existing user id. That would necessitate
changing the ids on the user's files. I had a similar situation and wrote
a Perl script to read the passwd file and change the ownership,
permissions, etc. It would need to be tweaked a little, but if you want I
can send it to you.
Ernest Johanson
Web Systems Administrator
Fuller Theological Seminary
On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, B. Dragoo wrote:
> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 14:06:26 -0800 (PST)
> From: B. Dragoo <chesterbelloc@yahoo.com>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: 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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