Reinstalling Ubuntu with Multiple Users

[jmadero]

Hi All,

I've done this a lot but I'm hoping there is a better way. I have my /home on it's own partition which makes things a bit easier but...is there a way to "bring in" all the users on install? When you set it up it only asks for one username, after that the only way I can get my users back is to manually set them up, which means I have to cut all of the folders out as sudo from my /home (otherwise I get an error about the home directory already being used), and then once I set the users I have to merge all the stuff back....really a pain. I know that there is a bug report on this but does anyone know of a better way, seems really really inefficient and launchpad has made it a wishlist not even a low priority

[D-cat]

Well, you can keep a backup of /etc/passwd, but I don't know where the key is kept, so you'd still have to reset all the passwords and groups. I suppose you could also keep /etc/group, but I don't know how restoring that over an upgrade might affect it.

This is one of those things you might consider practicing in a VM.

[jmadero]

the issue isn't passwords it's that when I try to add a user that their home directory already exists (which it will because I have a saparate partition for home which I never format), Ubuntu gives an error, so I have to go with Sudo, manually back all the folders up, delete them from the home partition, make the users again, then copy all the stuff back over....pretty annoying and inefficient

[D-cat]

Okay. Not 100% about this, but I'd think that restoring /etc/passwd (and maybe rebooting) might cure that problem.