Migrate from 3.0 to 4.1 without losing users/groups?

[mkrell]

Hello. My company is currently running a Zentyal 3.0 server actively and we are planning to move to Zentyal 4.1, installed on a different server entirely (the new 4.1 server is on a virtual machine if that helps). This 4.1 server I gave a different domain name and hostname from the 3.0 server so I could have both on the network at the same time and test the new 4.1 server, but we want to switch the 4.1 server to the hostname / domain / ip of the 3.0 server.

Now, I have already added the users and groups to the 4.1 server manually. But to my chagrin I noticed that Zentyal deletes all of that data when you change the hostname and/or the domain.

Is there any way to preserve this data?

The fact is, we want to have a seamless way to migrate from one server to the other. The way we want to do that is by bringing down the active one, configure the new one with the old one's ip/hostname/domain, and then turn it on. The 5 minute wait is fine in our situation, but an entire afternoon of re-adding our users and groups is not an option. Zentyal simply can't retain our Users Module data if we want to change the hostname or domain, and I'm uncomfortable having two machines with the same domain and hostname on the network.

So to sum up:

1.  Is is possible to retain the Users Module data and still change the hostname/domain?

2.  If this isn't possible, is there a better method for switching our server to 3.0 to 4.1?


I've looked at/theorized possible solutions:

Solution 1.: import users from .csv file
Ok, that makes sense; export the users manually, and then import them again....but how on earth to you export the data??? I have seen the perl scripts to bulk-import users but I haven't found the reverse. Granted, I could just make my own .csv file with that data all over again (and that would likely be a good idea just for backup reasons) but that solution also excludes the many groups that I have, and most of the users are in multiple groups.....

Solution 2.: edit a backup configuration file
Technically that isn't crazy, right? I took an extensive look through ebox's backup file; it looks like I just have to change the domain name / hostname manually in a few places and I can fix this problem. I just don't know what places those are...

Solution 3: manually edit Samba's database and pray it works
I'm all fine with trying this; yes, I don't know a lot about samba but we are running our soon-to-be-active server on KVM so I can destroy this virtual machine all I want provided I've got backup vms.


The ultimate solution would be to just use a 3.0 backup file on our 4.1 server. I don't know if that is possible since I know very little about Samba or ebox.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Matt

[mkrell]

As a follow up, we finally just decided that we'll have to manually add them. It's not ridiculously long; merely annoying that's all.

but seriously I've seen people with records to the tune of 500. How do you possibly preserve all of those in the scenario I'm in?