Re: moving a user account from one linux box to another

From: prawnpusher (nospamtoday_at_thanks.bye)
Date: 04/25/04 

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 02:57:20 +0200

David wrote:

> prawnpusher wrote:
>> Thanks for your help. Are there any issues like passwords or anything --
>> or is it just a question of ensuring the user & group ids remain the
>> same?
>>
>> Also, will it work if I on the new system I create "fbloggs" (and not
>> fred) but using the same user & group ids of "fred" from the old box?
>
> If you change users you may need to drop using the "p" option in
> the tar command so that when you unpack it it will allow the
> permissions to change to the new user/group of fbloggs.
>
> tar cjvf freds/files.tbz2 freds/files
>
> Login as new-user and unpack.
> tar xjvf freds/files.tbz2
>
> If you include the "p" option it will preserve file owner and
> permissions. One thing that may cause problems is mozilla since
> the user name is used in a few places in the
> ~/user/.mozilla/prefs.js file. You can edit it for the new user
> to correct the problem though.
>

Thanks, it's working now. Just ensured that 'fbloggs' took the same user &
group ids as 'fred' and did a
 cp -p -r /mnt/old-disk/fredsfiles /newlocation
This preserved all the user/group/other read/write/execute flags for all
files and directories and ensured perfect transition from old user 'fred'
to new user 'fbloggs'. 

-- 
"He who play in / as root and typeth 'rm -fr *' will kill tree immediately.
Don't try this at home kids!"
Debian Linux: Open, free and maintainable. The Linux for real
programmers ;-)

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