Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!aplcen!haven!adm!xadmx!mchinni@pica.army.mil
From: mchinni@pica.army.mil (Michael J. Chinni, SMCAR-CCS-E)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re:  Crypt/Passwords
Message-ID: <21118@adm.BRL.MIL>
Date: 12 Oct 89 15:28:16 GMT
Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL
Lines: 35


sys0001 <sys0001@dircon.uucp> writes:
> The first question: would I be right in saying that password entries
> produced with a particular version of crypt, will be compatible with
> passwords entries produced with the same version of crypt on another
> machine (maybe with a different CPU)?
> 
> What I'm concerned about is transfering users to a new system when we
> upgrade. I don't want to reissue loads of passwords, so I want to be able
> to somehow preserve the passwords between systems.

We have about 12 supermini class UNIX boxes from a variety of makers (Pyramid,
Encore/Gould, DEC VAX, MassComp). Some run a variant of BSD, some run a variant
of SysV, some run dual universes. 

When we need to transfer users from one system to another, as far as password
file entries, we just copy their entry from the 'from' system to the 'to'
system.  We have been doing this for several years now and have not had any
problems (users couldn't log into the 'to' system and had to have passwords
re-issued/re-chosen).

The only problems you might run into would be if the 'to' system already has
users on it. In which case you should be carefull of duplicate UIDs, home
directory filesystems being different, and possibly a different group structure.

Hope this helps !

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			    Michael J. Chinni
      Chief Scientist, Simulation Techniques and Workplace Automation Team
	 US Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center
 User to skeleton sitting at cobweb   () Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey  
    and dust covered workstation      () ARPA: mchinni@pica.army.mil
      "System been down long?"        () UUCP: ...!uunet!pica.army.mil!mchinni
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