restoring user accounts after an upgrade/reinstall?

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 12:32:17PM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Tom Weniger wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2004-04-12 at 05:54 -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > >
> > >   any thoughts on whether this technique should still work?  i'll find
> > > out in an hour or two, i suspect, it would just be nice to have some
> > > advance warning if there are some surprises in store.
> > >
> > > rday
> > >
> > > p.s.  i'm configuring selinux for "warning" on the new system.  if i
> > > enabled it, would that be an issue here for some reason?
> > >
> > Greetings Robert,
> >
> > I think the technique would still work. I have had no problems on my
> > small NFS home network. I am running with SELinux enabled (targeted).
> > The only variation I have used is updating the clients via NFS install
> > and the server last. My network is small enough that I can update
> > the /etc files by hand from a checklist. I hope the install goes well.
> 
> seemed to work fine.  my only concern was that, traditionally, i'd
> just restore the previous account info in the /etc files.  i just
> never know when a new release might introduce extra authentication
> files somewhere that i've never heard of.
> 
> rday
I don't if this is helpful or relevant but if you untar a directory
with the -k option files that are already there are not overwritten.
So if you tar and old directory you can restore it without
overwritten updated files in the new directory.
-- 

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Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
One Trinity Place.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam at trinity.edu