Copy Sendmail installation?

[NikTheGeek]

Hi, I have a job to do next monday, but I don't know too much detail yet.

Is it possible to copy the Sendmail configuration from an old Sun Netra 5.x box over to a SuSE 10 box or will the format of the config files be way out?

Also, there are around 80 users on this Sun box, how would I copy user accounts across?

Thanks for any pointers...

Nik

[Roxoff]

It'd be really handy to have the m4 config file for the domain, then you could rebuild the sendmail configuration on the new host. You might want all the information that sits in /etc/mail too (domain relaying, user aliases, etc.).

To copy accounts across - it really depens on the password encryption algorithm used on the sun box. You might have to get each user to type in a new password for you. Copying the contents of the home directories is generally a pain-in-the-ass but hard to get wrong (see 'cp -a ...'). Taking the /etc/passwd, /etc/group and /etc/shadow over is a relatively easy task, and can be swiftly integrated with the equivalent files on the new machine (remember that the encryption method might be different, and hence passwords not work).

You could also consider this as an opportunity to bring in a new account authentication system (such as LDAP or something similar) to take the accounts off one machine and have some kind of central authentication in one place. Migrating accounts from the sun box to an authentication server isn't a whole lot of work - not much more difficult that cutting and pasting users from the /etc/passwd file.

[NikTheGeek]

Luckily the job didn't have to be done in a day, nor even a week. I have a few weeks. Anyway, I have the Sendmail install working fine on a temp public IP and it accepts mail to the test users I have on the box, so it is only the user accounts to do...

cheers,

Nik