Topic: Moving users between servers.

[acemake]

Hi,

I have 2 SME servers. One is V5.5 and one is V6.0.1.

I'd like to move a few users from the 5.5 to the 6.0.1 server.  There aren't many so creating them manually on the newer box is no real problem, but some of them use Webmail and so I'd like to move their existing emails across as well.

Is there a simple way to do this?

Regards

Mark.

[gzartman]

If it were me and I only had a small number of users to deal with, here's what I'd do:

1. Manually create the new users on the 6.0.1 box.

2. Tar the home dirs for all the users on your 5.6 box.  For example:  tar -cf greg.tar /home/e-smith/files/users/greg (my home dir)

3. Copy the user home dir tar files to the 6.0.1 box via FTP, SMB, etc.

4. Delete the home dirs for all users on the 6.0.1 box.

5. Move the 5.6 user home dir tar files to /home/e-smith/files/users on the 6.0.1 machine and untar them.  For example:  tar -xf greg.tar

6. Chown all user home dirs to the correct owner.  Using greg as the example user there, issue the following:  chown -R greg:greg /home/e-smith/files/users/greg

This procedure will preserve your users data and email w/o having to monkey with any of the SME & linux account files.

Greg

[acemake]

Thanks Greg,

I was hoping it was going to be as simple as doing something like that, but didn't know if there had been any structural changes between the versions.

I'll create two dummy accounts, one on each box, later and give it a try.

Regards

Mark

[dzeanah]

If nothing else works you can always log into both accounts at the same time via IMAP client like Netscape or Outlook Express, and drag-n-drop.  Something I had to do recently myself (only a dozen accounts though, so it wasn't too difficult).