preserving logins

preserving logins

[Karthik Vishwanath]

Hello,

I have a dual-boot (windows, linux) machine that runs Redhat 9.0. There
are two physical drives hda and hdb - the linux partition resides on hdb
(/boot - hdb1, / - hdb2, /home - /hdb3). I plan to install debian on hda
now (blowing away the windoze partition completely), but want to retain
the same logins/uids/gids for all the users from the Redhat installation.  
How can I do this?

Thanks,

-K


--------------
"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand 
things that won't work." - Thomas Edison

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Re: preserving logins

[Spack]

I don't think it's a good idea because it's can occur some problems
due to the different between that two distributions... It's preferable
to have distinct files for all users but they can be in the same
partition...
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Re: preserving logins

[Ulrich Fürst]

Spack <spack.world@gmail.com> wrote: 
> I don't think it's a good idea because it's can occur some problems
> due to the different between that two distributions... It's preferable
> to have distinct files for all users but they can be in the same
> partition...

If you have documents that you want to be able to edit either from RH or
Debian you have to have the same uid on both systems. I agree with you,
that there could be some problems using the same home directories
however. 

Ulrich
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Re: preserving logins

[Ulrich Fürst]

Karthik Vishwanath <karthikv@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG> wrote: 

> I want to retain the same logins/uids/gids for all the
> users from the Redhat installation.   How can I do this?

I don't know RH so I don't know which uid/gid the users/groups have.
For Debian the user IDs normaly begin with 1000. 

You could add new users in Debian with: 
# adduser --uid $UID_FROM_RH $USER
without problems. You can take every UID that isn't in use by the system
already. (Didn't test it with uid lower than one hundred).

There's another limit at 100. AFAIK below 100 the system groups and
above groups from programs such as exim, spamassassin an so on.
Sorry, can't find the exact rule for that at the moment.


Ulrich
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Re: preserving logins

[Karthik Vishwanath]

Since there are fair number of other users than myself on this machine, I
want to keep the same /home partition, under either system. Is it possible
for me to use the same passwd/shadow files on either system, and expect
compatibility (if so, which are the files to be copied) or must I ask
every old user to re-create their passwds? (I can do that, if its the
easiesr route, which is a relative measure!)

Thanks,

-K 

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, Ulrich [ISO-8859-15] Fürst wrote:

> Karthik Vishwanath <karthikv@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG> wrote: 
> 
> > I want to retain the same logins/uids/gids for all the
> > users from the Redhat installation.   How can I do this?
> 
> I don't know RH so I don't know which uid/gid the users/groups have.
> For Debian the user IDs normaly begin with 1000. 
> 
> You could add new users in Debian with: 
> # adduser --uid $UID_FROM_RH $USER
> without problems. You can take every UID that isn't in use by the system
> already. (Didn't test it with uid lower than one hundred).
> 
> There's another limit at 100. AFAIK below 100 the system groups and
> above groups from programs such as exim, spamassassin an so on.
> Sorry, can't find the exact rule for that at the moment.
> 
> 
> Ulrich
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Re: preserving logins

[Ray Olszewski]

Karthik Vishwanath wrote:
> Since there are fair number of other users than myself on this machine, I
> want to keep the same /home partition, under either system. Is it possible
> for me to use the same passwd/shadow files on either system, and expect
> compatibility (if so, which are the files to be copied) or must I ask
> every old user to re-create their passwds? (I can do that, if its the
> easiesr route, which is a relative measure!)
[...]

This is a difficult question to give you a definitive answer to.

If RH and Debian use compatible password encryption, you can simply tuck 
the RH /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files someplace safe, then do the 
Debian install, letting it creates its own, new /etc/passwd and 
/etc/shadow files. Then you just cut and paste the user-level entries 
(the ones about 1000, if RH follows the same numbering convention that 
Debian does) from your tucked-away RH files into the corresponding 
Debian files.

But I didn't even notice what version of RH you said you were using, so 
I don't know if the encryption mechanisms will match.

As someone else already explained, you really do want to let Debian 
create the system accounts for you. Conventions on these accounts drift 
a bit over time, and I would have no real confidence that an unknown 
version of RH and any current version of Debian use perfectly matching 
conventions.



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