Notes: Migrate Linux users to another Linux server

Lovell Felix — April 01, 2015

The Problem

I have a Debian 5.0.4 virtual machine that's no longer supported and my shop is pretty much a CentOS ecosystem. The server is primary use for sFTP with over 250 user accounts.

The PLAN: Migrate from Debain 5 to CentOS7, and avoid manually recreating user accounts or generating new passwords. Sounds easy right? Actually, it was and wasn’t as time consuming as I anticipated or took a lot effort to get all the user accounts including the host directory over to the new server.

I outlined the steps in gist below:

FYI: Linux is awesome! :D