Very Computer

An older BSDI machine is exhibiting problems.  For a variety
of reasons, there was no working sunstitiute, ready to kick in,
but I have one almost ready.  This box is a nameserver and
POP server, also running sendmail.  That's it.    

With Samba, since we have no tape drive to dump to,
I have been copying users and other stuff to another machine,
via drag and drop from a windows machine to a directory that gets
backed up by our Netware based backup software and tapedrive.

Our mail server (with sector errors) will not even let us create
a new account.  I tried to move all of the accounts (/usr/home stuff
and their /usr/var/mail) to another machine.  Even though I did
the things to recreate POP auth (popauth -init, pwd_mkdb, newaliases,
etc.) people cannot sign in.  I found that every file within the
user's
directory appears to have root ownership.  No doubt from using Samba
to
transfer without the version and switches nec to preserve ownership.

I had the same problem with the mail files, but a shell script I wrote
chowned
them back to the ls name:

        for file in 'ls [a-z]*'
                do chown "$file" "$file"
                done

I got the new box set up so that this was the only problem remaining.
When
plugged into the network, even our Gauntlet firewall thinks it is the
original box, and it handles DNS and sendmail no problem.  Therefore,
I am reluctant to start changing these settings (IP, hostname, DNS
server properties, etc.) just so that I can put it on the network with
a separate identity, and copy the usrs again using rdist or something.
 Is there an easier way - another kind of shell script, perhaps?

I tried the same  script as shown above, but this does not appear to
work so well for those "files" within each user's directory:
        .cshrc
        .profile
        .rhosts
        .xinitrc    ....etc...:

Perhaps because they are a different type of file, so instead of "for
file" it should be something else?  Back a directory (/usr/home) with
"for dirname" didn;t work for these, either.  Or, I should invoke a
routine like adduser to modify them, and it will restore ownership
correctly?  I might need to do chgrp to some also?  Wouldn't their
group membership alter in some cases with ownership change?  (There
are only a few that are not "staff")

Also, is there much danger with me just badsecting the existing
machine?  I
really wanted to have the substitute on line before messing with
badsect or
diskdefect, but we have run out of time.  Are there any special
precautions
I should observe?

Just can't finish this disaster recovery, so I can migrate to FreeBSD
with new hardware.

Kind Regards, Mike

Why not use rsync to copy the files to the new machine?  With
appropriate switches it will work quite well to keep ownership etc.
You could use it on the entire home directory.  But rsync needs to
be running on both machines.  You can certainly install it on the
FreeBSD machine; I'm not sure about the BSDI one.

But maybe I'm missing something?

        Annelise

--
Annelise Anderson
Author of:               FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your PC
Available from:  BSDmall.com and amazon.com
Book Website:    http://www.bittreepress.com/FreeBSD/introbook/      

chown -R is your friend in these situations.

for file in `ls /usr/home`; do
        chown -R $file $file
        chgrp -R <users> $file
done