Moving User Accounts

To establish NetWare user accounts on the Linux server, you must manually configure them. There are no widely available utilities or tools you can use to perform this function. However, the typical Unix/Linux password can be used as a reference for the kind of information you'll need in order to create user accounts on Unix/Linux systems. If you only need to create a few user accounts for just system administrators, for example, the process will be simple. If you need to create a large number of accounts, possibly for client workstations, you probably will find it necessary to produce a report from the NetWare system and use this to make the entries or create a script file that can be used for this purpose.

The Unix/Linux password file is covered in Chapter 42, "Managing Unix and Linux Users."

And if you are using NetWare 5.x or 6.x, the Native File Access Pack feature enables Unix, Windows, and Macintosh clients to access NetWare servers. This feature doesn't require you to install NetWare client software on the client systems, and can be integrated with the directory services.

NetWare, particularly the 4.x and higher versions that support directory services, keeps track of a lot more information for a user account than is done on Unix/Linux systems that use just the /etc/passwrd file. Because of this, and the simplicity of the /etc/passwrd file, you won't have to do a lot of work to create new user accounts on the Linux system. However, you might find that the trade-off is that you need to examine security (file permissions, for example) and other aspects of your Unix/Linux system to ensure that your users are afforded the same access.