Building new server with old home folders

Question

I have a dying 10.5.5 server with OD that is in dire need of a rebuild. I am going to install 10.5.8 unlimited on a new machine and create all the same user accounts(names) in WGM, I then want to re-link all the old home folders to the new accounts.
Is this as simple as naming the new accounts identically as the old ones and then making the home folder location the same as the old?
Will I need to do anything regarding permissions on the old home folders etc??

Answer 1

Hi,
I have had to do the same thing many times what with server upgrades, crashes etc and I have found the most effective way is as follows:
1. Create the OD on the new machine and create the accounts making sure that the shortnames are the same so that the home folder names match in the new location.
2 as root user (type su - in terminal and put in the root password)use rsync in the terminal to copy the old folders to the new location eg:
rsync -av --progress [email protected]:/Volumes/userdata/homefolders/ /Volumes/userdata/homefolders/
That could take some time but it is better than using a gui as it can tend to corrupt a few things.
NOW, you will find that there are permissions issues if the user ID's have changed accross servers so I always run a little script to correct this. I will explain how to do it in the terminal in case you may be baffled by the terminal, my apologies if you already know this but it may help someone else.
open terminal and type: vi permissions.sh
you will then be in a vi editing window. Press I (thats an Eye not an Ell)to start editing and type in the following (adjust for your own environment)
for i in /Volumes/userdata/homefolders/*
do
u=`echo $i | cut -d/ -f5`
chown -R $u /Volumes/userdata/homefolders/$u
done
Now press ESC to get out of editing mode and type : x (without the space in between, edited to remove smiley) and hit return to exit and save.
back in the terminal window type chmod 777 permissions.sh (this makes the script executable)
Now you should be ready to run the script which will effectively take the name of each folder and change the ownership of everything in said folder to the new user and rectify any permissions issues.
type: ./permissions.sh
You should be sorted now.
Alternatively you can try Passenger. http://macinmind.com/?pid=2&progid=1&subpid=1 which can do all of the above but I find it quicker to do it manually.
I do use passenger for bulk account creation though, admins best friend.
Hope I never lost the plot there and that it helps someone on their way
Message was edited by: PsyMan2009 to rectify smileys at vital parts LOL