Is there a way to copy users & passwords from one server to another?

 

Obviously I know the usernames but I don't know the passwords

You will need to synchronize your /etc/passwd (user names and accounts) and /etc/shadow (actual hashed passwords) files. Well, I take that back. You'll just want to synchronize the entries for your users, you won't want to copy the whole files over, as they're altered by various plugins to add or remove users.

 

Actually, hold that thought, someone else may know better. I don't really know if the actual share users are listed in any of the other configuration files. I do know that Samba is set to security = USER, which means that it checks passwords against the Unix passwd/shadow files. Bad me, I haven't actually configured my server to have any other users than root.

on reflection, I suppose they are stored against the share, so I probably can't copy anything over.  My bad for not backing up my flash in 6 months, I will have to see if I can remember the passwords on the pc's instead, if not, reset them and start again.

As far as I can tell, all you need to do is synchronize the /boot/config/passwd and /boot/config/shadow files from the two usb drives and reboot.

 

I did something similar over here:

  https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=53052.msg510035#msg510035

and haven't had any problems.

 

 

You'll still have to assign the users to the shares, but this process should give them the same username/passwords.