user managment

[RUMMY]

how can I backup users and groups and then restore

[SirDice]

Backup /etc/passwd and /etc/pwd.db.

[RUMMY]

need I /etc/master.passwd /etc/group /home/* /var/mail/* ?

[dennylin93]

The file that saves the group is /etc/group. Since /etc/passwd is a shadowed version of /etc/master.passwd, is only shows "*" in place of the password hashes.

The directories under /home contain the files of users, and /var/mail contains the mail. Information such as groups, passwords, and usernames aren't saved in these directories, but sometimes there's important stuff you might want to backup.

[RUMMY]

The file that saves the group is /etc/group. Since /etc/passwd is a shadowed version of /etc/master.passwd, is only shows "*" in place of the password hashes.

The directories under /home contain the files of users, and /var/mail contains the mail. Information such as groups, passwords, and usernames aren't saved in these directories, but sometimes there's important stuff you might want to backup.

so how can I fully backup my users and than restore?

[vivek]

so how can I fully backup my users and than restore?

Use dump and restore command to backup /etc, /home, /var etc directory. If you just need those files use tar:
tar -cvf /path/to/backup.tar /etc/passwd /etc/master.passwd /etc/blah /home/you /home/me /var/mail

To restore use tar again:
cd /
tar -xvf /path/to/backup.tar
To get only /etc/passwd
tar -xvf /path/to/backup.tar /etc/passwd /etc/master.passwd /etc/group

[RUMMY]

I tried but not works, as I see whit that files I cant manage users. so how can I do that?

[dennylin93]

I don't really understand your previous post, but you have to be root in order to do these backups. Use su or sudo su to gain the proper permissions. The latter requires security/sudo.

There's also a nice howto about backups here: https://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=185