Migrate Linux users to another Linux server

April 2, 2015 Lovell Felix 1 min read

Archive note: the tools and versions have moved on. I have kept this entry because the debugging path and the underlying constraint may still be useful.

The Problem

I have a Debian 5.0.4 virtual machine that's no longer supported, and my shop is otherwise a CentOS environment. The server is used primarily for sFTP, with over 250 user accounts.

The plan: migrate from Debian 5 to CentOS 7 without manually recreating user accounts or generating new passwords. It sounds simple, and it mostly was, but getting every account (including home directories) moved over took more care than I expected.

The steps, as a gist:

About the author

Lovell Felix

Infrastructure and reliability engineer working on Linux platforms, configuration delivery, and deployment safety at fleet scale.

@lovellfelix

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