On Saturday 13 April 2002 10:31 am, you wrote: > What's the easiest way to copy a userbase from Linux Box A to Linux > Box B? > > I just _know_ there's got to be some reason why copying /etc/passwd > and /etc/shadow from the old box to new box won't work. Is it really > that simple? Sure, it will work. But keep in mind everything that is happening, to be sure its what you want to do. First, thoses databases tend to be cashed, so even just editing them by hand dosnt always update right away (the reason many distros have a vipw and vigr commands). We even had a system get an "oops" (someone with root do a bad rm -rf *) where the passwd and shadow file were blasted- and people could still log on. Second- make sure all the system accounts match up. In the unix world, all that *really* matters is your ID, so make sure userid 41 is the same on both, for example. The other thing to consider, is when you transfer it, be sure to do it in a secure way (scp, floppy disk, isolated network, etc).